Cenotaph I: The Morrow
by Rob Sears
Summary: Roahn'Shepard was always doomed to an abnormal life. As the daughter of John and Tali, she would always be overshadowed by her parents' heroics, but at home... her father is no hero. He is distant. Withdrawn. But when a new threat arises, she and her father are forced to confront their differences and Roahn will soon discover what it means to be the daughter of Commander Shepard.
1. Chapter 1: No Child Left Behind

[. . . AWAITING PRIMER FILE . . . ]  
[. . . STANDBY. . .]  
[LOADING PERIOD ELAPSED. AWAITING COMMAND.]

 _% $ grep –A 3 –i "Immediate Hierarchy" firstname_lastname_

[. . . RETRIEVING. . .]  
[5.09 x 10^5 RESULTS LOCATED. ADD ADDITIONAL FILTER? Y/N]

 _Y_

[SPECIFY]

 _# lastname_

[INDICATE VALUE FOR FILTER "lastname"]

 _Shepard_

[. . . RETRIEVING. . .]  
[NO RESULTS LOCATED. RETRY QUERY.]

 _$ logoff execute_

[LOGGING OFF]

* * *

 _Rannoch – Huel Continent_ _  
Galactic Year 2198 – 12 years after Reaper War_

As usual, Roahn awoke before her alarm could rouse her.

She resisted groaning out loud, fearful that such an outburst would go noticed amongst the people in close proximity. Roahn stretched her limbs out as she lay upon her cot – a reflex to iron out all the kinks she had accumulated during the night – and titled her wrist to activate her chronometer, emitting blocky numbers in a sickly, orange glow.

Roahn frowned. She still had an hour to go before the morning's events were to begin. So much for squeezing in every available second of sleep. Roahn was rather annoyed at her inability to fade away into a deep slumber that she so desperately wanted to use one of her mother's favorite curses as a way to deal with her frustration, but Roahn was too mindful of her surroundings to take up that action, so she settled for mouthing the rude word instead. Roahn had made the mistake of uttering a bad word like that in front of one of her mentors a few weeks ago, and while she was not punished for such an infraction, her mentor's disapproving stare was enough to dissuade her from saying that word ever again.

In a way, waking up this early in the day was a mixed blessing for Roahn. At least she had an easy transition out of her rest rather than her chronometer emitting a loud and angry blare to shock her awake. Roahn had banged her head many a time upon the low ceiling that the cot afforded – clearly an oversight in design, for the natural instinct of a person that is so abruptly awakened is to violently jerk in any direction that their body was afforded, upwards being the most common direction in this case.

Roahn had garnered enough bruises on her forehead to last a lifetime. This way she could have the satisfaction that her sleep was going to be completely devoid of injury. It's the little things that count.

But waking up prior to her dictated hour presented another problem for Roahn: what to do to occupy her time with until the events of the day began in earnest. She could very well continue to lie where she was and hope to squeeze in a few more minutes of precious sleep. Ancestors knows that the rest would definitely be gratifying.

Unfortunately, it was too late for that. Roahn was already wide-awake and antsy. Sleep was just a trifling memory now, a filter dream. A state that was now far out of her reach.

What to do… what to do…

Not content to let herself lie about until the day started in full, no sense of being languid existing within her, Roahn rolled off of her cot and gingerly placed her suited feet upon the floor. Upon the corners of her vision, Roahn could make out the sky blue tinges of color that threatened to encroach upon her entire world in addition to the tiny and seemingly meaningless symbols being portrayed in the upper right hand corner of her heads-up-display, obscuring her sight with a singular hue. Such were the usual fixtures that came with having to wear a helmet all the time. Roahn quickly got used to the sight in mere seconds as she awoke. For her, it was easy to ignore such trifles.

It was all merely part of being a quarian, after all.

Roahn flexed her fingers, noting the miniscule crinkling noise her enviro-suit made as it was scrunched up near her joints from her movements. She _heard_ the noise, to be precise, but no thought was given toward it. Despite the logical roadblocks an enviro-suit caused for the wearer, Roahn was able to forget the fact that she was wearing it, at least for most of the day. She had been living inside suits like this for most of her life. This was a second skin to her – her suit practically defined outward appearance to individuals, and was responsible for coloring the perceptions of the people around her.

It did not mean that Roahn liked _wearing_ the thing, though.

Enviro-suits. Full-body getups that tightly adhered to the wearer and were coupled with heavy metallic helmets to safely house and protect the skulls of quarians. An individual pocket that completely isolated the quarian from any outside stimuli, be it the puff of wind or a kiss upon a cheek.

Make no mistake, the enviro-suit was the best and yet the worst thing to happen to quarians in their entire history.

Quarians had no choice at wearing the suits. Their immune systems were simply too catastrophically weak for them to walk around unmasked and vulnerable. Exposure to foreign environments was, all things considered, a lethal endeavor as quarians could not adapt in time to anything that might cause an allergic reaction. It was a symptomatic curse that all quarians had to bear, a character trait that could have been more easily managed had fate been kinder to them.

Because the universe has a cruel sense of humor, fate turned out to have it out for the quarians.

In perhaps the largest dose of unfairness for the species, the quarians had suffered a serious defeat upon their homeworld, Rannoch, three centuries ago that had forced every single person to depart the one planet they could walk around without masks. Three centuries in space tends to degrade bodily processes something fierce, and as a result, the immune systems of all quarians, already poor, had languished even further to the point where enviro-suits were an absolute necessity, no matter where they were. There was no argument against this fact for the quarians. Seal yourself off, or face a certain and painful death from your airways swelling and cutting off your air as a result of a fatal reaction.

Not surprisingly, the quarians learned to live with the suits.

Roahn had only been in enviro-suits for four years now and already she had managed to drown out the knowledge that her sense of touch had essentially been stripped away from her. Being nine years old, it was particularly easy for her to forget the brief moments during her infancy where she did not have a care in the world. Part of her still wondered what it would be like if she were to strip off her glove, though, and run her bare, three-fingered hand along everything in this room. A jolt of glee ran through her at the thought – a natural inclination towards her disobedient imaginings. She was not ready to take that plunge just yet. Roahn remembered a story her mother had told her when she had accidentally been exposed to the outside air and Roahn did not want to experience that firsthand. Being confined to a bed for a week and having to breathe through a filter, constantly coughing up a lung, did not sound like fun at all.

Looking down, Roahn finally slipped her suited feet into her upright boots, which she had set next to her cot before she had gone to sleep last night. She then knelt down onto the floor and pulled open a drawer underneath the frame of the cot. A couple of belts and a vivid piece of blue fabric were all that lay inside. She took them all out and lay them upon the stiff mattress.

The two belts helped to form an infinite loop that held a metal, ovular disc in the middle. Roahn unbuckled one side and slung the two belts over her hips before clasping it back into place, making sure that the metallic disc, her _ryhl_ , was facing outward. The _ryhl_ was emblazoned with a simple crest – a hollow circle surrounded by another circle that had a missing gap right at the top. It had been her grandfather's, Roahn remembered as she gently traced the pattern with a finger. A memory of a man who had died long before she had been born. He was not spoken of much in her house, though. Her mother had… mixed feelings towards the man, and her father had never even met him at all before he had passed.

Roahn then focused her attention to the other trapping that she had previously removed from the drawer. The blue fabric would not hold much significance for anyone other than a quarian, but for Roahn, it was priceless beyond belief. This was not just a piece of cloth, this was a _sehni_ , the most distinguishing aspect of Roahn's entire person. The _sehni_ was meant to tightly fit over Roahn's matte helmet, acting as a hood of sorts. Quarians had always used _sehnis_ in their culture, before they had even known how to travel to the stars, but they had specifically altered their enviro-suits to accommodate them once the need to isolate their immune systems became a problem that could not be avoided. The _sehni_ was arguably the one item that could differentiate a quarian from another based off sight alone. Roahn's was particularly identifiable due to the raised pattern of white fabric upon the blue backdrop that formed fractals of hurricane-like swirls in an unceasing storm upon the _sehni_. Roahn loved looking at it – the swirls played tricks with her eyes and made the pattern look like it was constantly shifting. Her mother had made it for her, using materials that she had gathered herself.

With a distinct reverence, Roahn's fingertips lightly plucked at the _sehni_ , placing it atop her helmet and pulling it taut. Snaps at dangling ends of the fabric connected each end as they looped around her arms and soon Roahn pronounced herself complete. Her blue visor hid her smile, but it was only to herself that this smile was meant for.

However, the smile quickly cooled as Roahn folded her hands together and closed her eyes, her breath now being emitted deeply and quietly.

"I hope you're proud of me," she whispered. "Wherever you are, I hope you're proud."

Quarian culture usually dictated that all prayers would typically be directed towards a person's collective ancestors as a way to bestow an even amount of reverence, but Roahn truthfully found it hard to give a damn about a bunch of relatives that she had never even met before. She had always been willful in this regard, never too keen on adhering to the religious dogma that her mentors had tried to instill unto her. She just could never see the point in it – until she had proof that these prayers were performing a tangible effect on her life, she was not going to bother.

However, she still remained respectful in certain aspects of her prayers but Roahn made sure to direct them onto one person only.

Roahn spent the next half hour playing a mindless game upon the console in the corner of the room, making sure that the volume was muted. It was rare that Roahn got some free time to herself these days and she learned to treasure these moments. Most of her waking hours were spent in the animated company of others, as was quarian custom, but Roahn sometimes felt like she needed to disengage from everyone once in a while. It was like there was a crushing pressure in her chest the longer she spent around a group of people and that pressure merely increased as time went on. By the end of the day, Roahn would find herself exhausted and on edge.

The room that Roahn was in was small and boxy – a prefabricated construction made of steel and white plastic. Aside from the desk that held the console she was playing on, there was only enough room for two double-decker bunks placed in an L-shape within another corner. The building itself was not quarian in origin, but human. Apparently structures like this were quite common place for many of the space-faring races, or at least, the species that had homeworlds to themselves for a while. These individual sleeping quarters were designed to be quickly installed on colony worlds as a way to provide quick and cheap accommodations without having to manually construct one from the resources that the colony world in question came with. The fact of the matter was that the quarians on Rannoch had considered these prefabs a benediction when several races had loaned them over years ago with the intent on helping Rannoch become colonized again. The Council species must have seen it in their interest to get the quarian race in the running for potential citizenship once again – decisive politicking, no doubt.

But Roahn had a keener mind than most would imagine. No one gave out necessary resources for free – there was always an unsaid bargain that would require satisfaction in the near or far future. She knew that the Council invited only civilized worlds into their ranks and currently Rannoch was far from civilized. The galaxy still needed stability after suffering a debilitating war (or so Roahn had read) and the inclusion of a new member into its ranks would definitely help turn the tide for contentious votes, if need be. The rapid development of Rannoch would set the stage for the quarians to earn a say in galactic politics, but that would also open them up to the agenda of others, enabling their vote to be enlisted in affairs that could potentially be problematic for other races.

Of course, first Rannoch had to reach a developed stage for all that to happen, which by most predictions, was still several decades away. Still, the propping up of quarian society as a potential puppet was a subject frequently commented upon in extranet chatboards – ones that Roahn devoured in an interest to gain insight into the galactic community at large, to understand how she came to be _here_ , individually and collectively.

In any case, Roahn knew that she had no right to complain about the status of her accommodations. Even though her quarters were less private and quite barebones as compared to her actual room back home, these were still far more luxurious than the cramped bunks quarians had used on board their ships as they desperately roamed the stars for a new home years ago. Her elders would have sharply called her ungrateful if they had caught her griping, but Roahn was wise enough to keep her mouth shut.

The minutes continued to tick on by and Roahn's mind wandered. She thought back to her mother and her father. She would have tried to kill more time by looking up more articles about Rannoch's recent history on the extranet, but they were out of range of a comm buoy right at this moment – the next one wouldn't be in direct orbit for at least another hour (a result of an infrastructure still in progress). Roahn continually felt frustrated that there were aspects of this planet that she still felt that she was ignorant to, but it seemed like no one had any good answers as to what happened on this planet twelve years ago.

No one talked about what went on back then. No one had been around, on the ground, to see the miracle that had freed this planet from control of the Reapers.

And the only person Roahn _could_ talk to about that refused to even bring it up around her.

Sighing in disgust, Roahn deactivated the console, causing the holographic screen to quietly blink into nothingness, just as a stirring sound emitted from the cot above Roahn's empty one. A maroon visor poked out from the bunk and Roahn saw the girl's eyes behind the thick glass level upwards in recognition as they made eye contact.

"You need to tell me your secret, Ro," the girl yawned, also having woken prior to her own alarm.

"What secret?" Roahn said innocently as she watched her friend clamber down from her bunk using the ladder bolted onto the side of the wall.

"You _know_ what secret. How is it that you always get up so early in the mornings? I can hardly manage getting up _now_."

Roahn paused before answering. Her father always liked to get up early in the day and only now did Roahn realize that she might have been unconsciously emulating him.

"Discipline, I guess," Roahn fibbed. "Maybe I just like to see you and everyone else suffer, eh, Nee?"

The girl named Nee laughed. "Uh-huh. You were just watching _Fleet and Flotilla_ again without me, right?"

 _Fleet and Flotilla_ was Nee's favorite vid. Roahn liked it well enough, but not nearly as much as Nee's obsession with the series.

"Would you believe me if I said that I was studying?"

"Studying? For what?" Nee was incredulous. "It's the end of term, what could you possibly be studying for? You're already done with your final project – you said so yourself. You couldn't at all still be working on it… right?"

"Not for the project, fool. Just a bit of light reading for myself." Roahn then adopted a faux-whining tone, " _Am I not allowed to do that?_ "

"If you say so," Nee shrugged, losing interest in her interrogation. "Ah, but maybe's it's about the end of term, right? After all, we're turning in our projects today! You still think that you're going to get a good reception?"

Honestly, Roahn did not care that the end of her schooling term was almost upon her, but she was somewhat relieved that she was finally able to present her final project to her mentors, finally. It had taken her a few weeks of solid and focused work, simply trying to make sure that all of her research had the proper context and that her design implementations were satisfactory. Hopefully it would make an impression with her mentors, but she was already so confident that her work was going to turn out fine that she knew she had not woken early on account of that.

"Think that all five mentors will consider your work sufficient?" Nee pried again before going off into a tangent. "I knew someone who threw up during their presentation, he was so nervous. You're not nervous, are you, Ro?"

Roahn's arms instinctively folded against her chest and she tilted her head, hoping that the obviousness of the gesture would relay her attitude. "Totally," she teased in a flat tone. "I'm so unbelievably petrified that I'm about to pass out. Go ahead, feel my arm. You feel it shaking? Do you?"

Nee did not bother playing along, her eyes taking an unamused look. "I think you're fine," she drolly proclaimed.

"Was I being too sarcastic?"

"Nope. I'm not playing this game, Ro!"

Roahn and Nee both laughed at their own weird senses of humor only to be met with more shuffling noises as two more girls bounded from the adjacent bunk onto the floor. Cevni and Zayhn were had been Roahn's friends ever since their term began – they had all met each other because they had been assigned as bunkmates. Naturally, fierce friendships had formed from such a close-knit grouping. The four of them did everything together, took the same classes, and had the same interests. Cevni had even gone so far as to affectionately dub their little group as "Shepard's Squad" out of reverence, but truth be told, it made Roahn a little uncomfortable to have that name be associated with her. She never brought that tidbit up, though, because her friends liked the name so much.

"Last day of term, you guys," Cevni announced with a spring in her step. "Everyone ready?"

Zayhn groaned as she bent to put on her boots. "Ready for it to be over, you mean."

"Well, I'm kind of sad, personally. It's going to feel like a long while until we're back here. I'm ready for more, in fact."

"Speak for yourself. Mentor Ihren's tutelage was mind-numbing. If I don't see his vacant expression for as long as I live, it'll be too soon."

Cevni blanched. "Okay, you have a point. Keelah, I can't believe I forgot about Ihren. Him and his strict grammatical rules."

Roahn twitched, a little flustered. "He wasn't _that_ bad, guys."

"' _That'_ bad!" Nee pointed out, laughing. "He marked me down because I forgot an accent on one of my words in his script studies. It was _one_ little microscopic marking that was missing and I _still_ got called out for it! Like anyone else would have mistaken it for any other word!"

Zayhn gave a shake of her head, her eyes squinting. "Sorry, Ro, but… I think he went out of his way to be nice to you. It's… because… you know what I mean."

Roahn felt her cheeks grow hot in indignation, knowing full well what Zayhn meant. "You really think that's the case?" she asked. "I doubt that any other mentor on this planet would be influenced to grade me easily all because I have the same last name as my father. How many kids of veterans are in our class right now? Do they all get graded on the same curve too?"

Zayhn raised her hands, obviously not prepared for this onslaught from Roahn. "Just a thought, Ro. Just a thought."

But Roahn did not think that Zayhn sounded convinced. She clenched her jaw, though, not wanting to discuss the matter further.

"Hey guys," Cevni put her arms around Nee and Zayhn as she leaned over in Roahn's direction, seeking to change the subject, "you'll never guess what kind of shipment I got yesterday."

"If it's another malfunctioning Shepard VI that only says those same four annoying phrases, Cevni, I swear that I'm going to throw it out the window," Nee warned. The windows were an inch thick and made of durable plastic, easily able to withstand an assault from a nine-year old quarian, but the threat registered among the group nonetheless.

Cevni just shook her head blithely as she reached underneath her bunk to pull out a brightly colored package. "My dad picked this up on Illium," she said proudly as she withdrew the object that was inside. "It's the latest model."

Awed _oohs_ were uttered amongst the group and the girls leaned in closer for a better look.

"The Garrus Vakarian action figure!" Nee jumped in glee as she took the miniature model of the turian in her hands. "The second generation, too. This only came out a few months ago! Look, it has replica carbon scoring on his collar! And his Mantis rifle has custom attachments on it, too!"

No shortage of admirers among us, Roahn thought to herself. But she had to fight to keep her braggadocio down because she already owned this particular action figure in addition to the first generation model, which portrayed the legendary war hero in an alternate armor style that was cleaner, giving the toy a more heroic light. Roahn's personal figurine of Garrus was back in her house, along with her other collectibles. She kept quiet as the toy was passed around the group, wanting to give Cevni her moment.

To be honest, it would be hard-pressed for anyone to find a bigger fan of Garrus Vakarian than Roahn herself. There was just something about that turian fighter, with his scarred face and weathered sniper rifle, that just gave off this bleeding edge of _coolness_ about him. The man had rarely been seen out of his blue and silver armor as well as his curved eyepiece that was positioned over his left eye. He was a skilled and brave fighter, a member of an elite squad of soldiers that had saved the galaxy from destruction years ago. His status as Commander Shepard's right-hand man during the war was known to all quarian children, and all the young ladies had schoolgirl crushes on the man because they found him handsome and, by his own admission in his biography, he once admitted that he was a massive dork.

Handsome _and_ modest. No wonder the ladies loved him.

"Neat," Zayhn breathed as she took the model in her hands.

"Very cool," Roahn agreed, trying to be polite.

"Isn't it?" Cevni said proudly as she took the figurine back. "This makes it number seven in my collection. I've asked my dad to keep an eye out for an Urdnot Wrex model, but those are always all sold out!"

"I know," Nee sighed. "At this rate, they're all going to be out of stock before I can ever look at one with my own eyes!"

Roahn's cheeks darkened behind her visor bashfully. Truth be told, she owned all twenty-five figurines including their various incarnations all released by the same toy company, _including_ an Urdnot Wrex model. She had them all lined up on her desk back home: a Mordin Solus, Legion, Liara T'Soni, Jack, Kasumi Goto, and even a Javik model. She was not going to mention this because it just felt so un-quarian to boast about her more lavish means. Most of her friends lived in rudimentary shacks back in their hometowns. It just felt wrong to blurt out that she had an expansive house over by the coast with her own room. People knew that Roahn came from a family that never wanted for anything, an obvious aspect due to her heritage, but the only reason that she had friends right now was because she tried so hard to not be a jerk with her boasting. She wanted people to like her.

Eventually all the talk about action figures made way for casual discussion about the most recent vids that had been released within the past solar year. Roahn relaxed, as this was a topic she could talk about to no end because all of her friends were pretty much on the same page as her in terms of their accumulation of pop culture. It was simply far more of a relief to discuss the latest epic war movie than it was to compare how many action figures everyone had in their collection.

Sadly, their conversation was soon cut short as all of the girls' omni-tools began beeping all at once – an indication to start heading over to the commissary for their morning meals. The girls all groaned in unison and shuffled off to their bunks to get all of their items in order (Cevni had to shove her Garrus figurine back under her cot) before they headed out for the day.

Roahn had been ready for at least an hour, but she still waited for her friends to be on the same page as her before she keyed the door to let themselves out.

* * *

Like many of the days that had come before, the morning was frigid, a fact made obvious by the nearly intangible swirls of heat that rose from the fabricated structures as they sat upon the bare ground. The temperature barely made an impression upon Roahn as her enviro-suit did an admirable job in keeping her body temperature in check. The most she felt was perhaps a slight inclination of a chill, but nothing that would otherwise hamper her today.

It was summer in the Huel region, but that meant very little as the surface temperature tended to hover around the 270 K range for most of the day. That, and the sun technically would not set below the horizon for months, due to Roahn being so close to the northern pole of the planet.

From beyond the circle of prefabricated structures that made up the main youth academy, Roahn could see snowcapped mountains gently rise above barren plains of long, dead grass while nearby frigid lakes rippled in response to erratic blasts of wind. This sort of setting was not at all typical for Rannoch as the majority of the planet was arid and filled with craggy rock formations, but near the poles the lower temperatures combined with a slight increase in humidity enabled for some diversity in terms of Rannochian landscapes. Still, it provided a nice deviation for Roahn compared to the environment she lived in back home, which was a couple thousand kilometers to the south of where she was.

A scene quite picturesque in its serenity. Roahn felt she could stare at the glassy lake for hours. Once Roahn had dipped her gloved hand into the freezing water and had been fascinated to find that ice crystals were starting to form around her fingers. It was a much different place than Roahn had ever been to. Some part of her wished that she could stay here for quite a lot longer.

In the open air, but still trapped within the stuffy confines of her helmet, Roahn sighed longingly.

Around her, exiting from their similar housing units, was a mass of similarly aged children all streaming towards the commissary. The academy here had been founded nearly seven years ago as an initiative by the quarian Conclave as part of a new stimulus package at the time. The newly-created academy would offer the next generation of quarians an education free from distractions and its primary focus would be fiercely aimed at developing the children here into keen thinkers. The children on Rannoch were the future of the species and it was unanimous in thought that the new generation be provided with the sort of education that would enable Rannoch to rise with their collective knowledge. The Conclave did not want mindless robots as citizens, they wanted free-thinking individuals. The quarians had a planet to take care of now and new ideas were sorely needed.

Enrollment in the academy was completely optional but, as an incentive, there was no fee per child. A smart move, given that, for centuries, quarians barely used syndicated currency amongst themselves. The kids had their room and board given out to them gratis, due to the fact that all the equipment here in the region had been received as gifts from other races. The government could afford the potential loss of income, anyway. There were two terms held in the academy per solar year, with a break of a few weeks in between. The kids were all kept on the same "campus" to cut back on commuting costs (that, and most quarians on Rannoch did not own transport on their own due to it being too expensive for them to afford) and the military supplied shuttles at the beginning and end of each break to ship the kids to and from their homes.

Roahn had no proof, but she had a sneaking suspicion that she had been enrolled here as a way for her father to get her out of the house. The man had not exactly endeared himself to her these past couple years since her mother wasn't around anymore, but this whole deal of sending her away to the academy smelled like a scheme to her, based on the fact that her father never made much of an effort to be a part of her life in quite a while. With her far away, he would not have to face the possibility of even _looking_ upon her, the coward.

She had to bite her tongue at that and Roahn shook her head as she stepped off the ramp that lead to her room and onto the dry grass, which crackled under her boots. She had several friends at this academy, so being here was a blessing in disguise anyway. Their company was so much more appreciated than what her family could give her at any rate.

The commissary was on the opposite site of the prefab circle and already a line was starting to form out the door. Roahn double-timed it to the line, not wanting to be stuck with the nutrient paste flavors that no one liked.

"Where are _you_ off to in such a hurry, Ro?" she heard Nee laugh behind her. Roahn did not respond back for she was too concentrated on getting breakfast.

She made it to the line in time to score a decent spot. Roahn let her friends cut behind her to the tune of some disapproving grumbles from her classmates. Roahn ignored them. It was pretty much an unsaid rule that kids could allow their friends to cut in line behind them (but not in _front_ of them!) She waited patiently for the line to shuffle through the opening where members of the staff were sorting out tubes of the easily digestible food onto the counter for the kids to grab. Crestfallen, Roahn could only watch as several of the tubes of her favorite flavor, Cipritine Heron-Egg, vanished one-by-one as the kids made a beeline for the yellow-colored tubes. It _was_ the most popular flavor, after all.

To Roahn's relief, there was one tube of the Heron-Egg flavor left when it was her turn to select her meal. But before she could reach out and grab it, someone rudely shoved her upon her back, causing her to stumble forward and against the counter rather roughly.

" _Move_ , runt," a harsh voice cackled and Roahn looked over to find Tri'Zaahn, a girl a couple of years older than her, snatch up the last tube of Heron-Egg and abruptly depart with a cruel look. It had happened so fast that neither Roahn nor her friends had any clue how to react until Tri had come and gone.

"Bitch," Roahn spat out of Tri's earshot, the rude word feeling glorious on her tongue. Her fingers started to curl into fists, but she relaxed in the blink of an eye, not wanting to do anything stupid.

For some reason, Tri had had it out for Roahn since the beginning of term, which never did progress beyond minor name-calling and some light shoving but it was still enraging all the same. Roahn knew that Tri was just exercising her advantage of being taller and older than her and that she was showcasing her superiority through her bullying tactics. Even if Roahn wanted to do something about it, she couldn't. Tri was the daughter of a prestigious admiral in the fleet, a fact that Tri went to great lengths to remind everyone about in an incredibly annoying sing-song voice, no less. It didn't stop Roahn from frequently fantasizing about punching Tri's visor so hard that it cracked, though.

"What a _bosh'tet_ ," Nee grumbled beside Roahn as they watched the laughing form of Tri waltz away. Nee grabbed a blue-colored tube, an inferior flavor but still adequate, and handed it to Roahn, who took it gratefully.

"If anyone could get away with punching her in the throat," Zayhn offered, "it'd be _you_ , Ro. Who cares if Tri's the daughter of an admiral?"

" _I_ care, for one," Roahn sighed. "And so will the mentors. Not to mention my father. Tri's dad will go absolutely ballistic if anyone touches his 'precious' daughter."

"Anyone… except you," Nee pointed out. "Not even Tri's dad will raise his voice towards you. You have more license than everyone here. No one will dare threaten your dad's daughter."

"Right…" Roahn replied warily. "But what will my father say to _me_ if I hit an admiral's daughter? What will happen then?"

Her friends had no answer for her.

Silently, the girls collected their food and made their way towards one of the unoccupied tables that had been placed outside the building as a sort of outdoor cafeteria. The cheap plastic creaked as Roahn and her friends sat upon it, but that was the extent of the noise it made. Everyone soon resumed chattering about the plans they were going to make during the break after term and even Roahn's spirits seemed to perk up little by little as she conversed with her friends.

However, Roahn soon caught a glimpse of Tri sitting upon the far perimeter, laughing with her friends as she ate her food. Roahn's food. The food that rightfully should have been hers.

Roahn felt her fist tighten upon her plastic food tube, not noticing that tiny fractures were beginning to form from where her fingers were clenching upon the slick surface.

* * *

Usually, during a normal term day, Roahn's entire time would be occupied with her and her friends sitting at assigned tables while her mentors delivered their lectures on their requisite subjects. However, since this was the last day, all the students were waiting around the middle of the hastily constructed campus so that they could present their final modules to the mentor board, or as the students liked to affectionately dub it, the "Admiralty Board." The kids had been given direction and guided help on the topics that they had chosen to present and today would be the day that all their effort would find fulfillment.

Roahn felt that she had been adequately prepared for this day. She had truthfully enjoyed all of the subjects that she had taken throughout the term: applied mathematical functions, communication comprehension, physical sciences, general history of the quarians, and a brief foray into strategy analysis. Roahn had practically devoured all of the necessary materials required for comprehension and insight into her choice of final project and she felt that her schooling had been immensely helpful in that regard.

All Roahn was hoping for was that her project would merit a satisfied response from her mentors. Assignments here were not doled out some arbitrary metric of grading, they were judged more by their experience and actual participation in hands-on work, whether that be utilizing their knowledge of chemical compounds to predict the half-life of certain elements or by programming automated workflows to reduce menial console labor. The point was not for the student to be judged if their work was completed, but if they truly understood the material.

 _Mahav Dah'Vohsk_. The Final Lesson, this ordeal was known as. A pass today would merely seem trivial but a failure would reflect badly not only on the student, but on their family as well. Roahn shuddered to think how her father would react if she failed here. Even though he was distant towards her most days, his disappointment in her would still sting nonetheless.

The butterflies in her stomach were becoming almost painful now. She couldn't go anywhere, though. She was due to present to the board in mere minutes. She was just going to have to suck it up and go on ahead.

Right on cue, the doors to the building in question opened and a boy of Roahn's age shuffled out in a daze. His nerves must have been shot during presenting, Roahn figured. She checked her chronometer to confirm that her time was indeed approaching and confidently strode up the ramp into the darkened room.

Roahn took a breath as the door closed behind her.

All five of her mentors were seated upon a singular bench near the far wall of the prefab. It was just them in this room, no other trappings adorning the place so that the students had room to breathe. Roahn's feet seemed to momentarily stick to the floor but she managed to walk into the center of the room, giving a heavy swallow as the dim lightning threatened to root her to the spot. Her fingers started to tremble but she clenched a fist in denial. No! She was going to do this without fear!

The mentors had been chatting amongst themselves when Roahn had arrived and the one in the middle, Mentor Sodin, kindly held up a hand so that her colleagues could cease their conversation.

"Roahn'Shepard," Sodin announced as the girl stood her ground confidently. "How are you today, child?"

Roahn resented being called a child, but Sodin _was_ her elder and she was only nine. She tried to not let her indigence show too much.

"I'm…" Roahn started but gave a slight cough as she realized she was speaking too quietly. "I'm doing fine, Mentor Sodin."

"That's good to hear," Sodin said earnestly. "I'm sure you're more than ready for today." Roahn liked Sodin. She had been one of her favorite mentors throughout the term because she constantly prodded her students to challenge themselves without being unreasonable. That, and her subject of expertise, mechanical applications, was a topic that Roahn had been greatly interested in and had somewhat influenced her final choice for her project.

Another mentor, Jayt, shuffled next to Sodin as he made a gentle gesture in Roahn's direction. "Well, Roahn, I'm sure you're just as eager as the rest of your comrades to finish up for today and to finish up your term. Your father must be excited to see you back at home, no doubt."

Roahn highly doubted that but nodded all the same.

"So in the interest of providing you with all the time you need for your presentation," Jayt continued, "you may proceed whenever you're ready. Don't be nervous. Feel free to speak as you would to a friend."

That, Roahn felt she could do. She closed her eyes for a full second and took another deep breath, focusing on calming herself so that she would not stumble upon her words when she spoke next.

Roahn tipped her palm upwards, towards the ceiling, and ignited her omni-tool, which materialized as a series of shifting orange circles that levitated just above her hand. From Roahn's tool, a visualization of a tall staff-like object became projected in a blown-up view, standing more than a meter tall next to the girl as she waited for her project to load.

Well… this was it. Roahn figured she might as well enjoy this.

"Mentors," Roahn began as she folded her hands together in respect, "let me say that it was a privilege to learn from you this term and that I hope to find myself under your tutelage in the near future."

It was quarian courtesy to be reverent to one's mentor. After all, they were responsible for helping to shape her future from their teachings. After this, Roahn could proceed in full.

"If I may be honest," Roahn started, making sure that she still had on a deferential air, "it was fairly simple for me to narrow down my area of interest for my presentation. I wanted to focus on something that would be representative of the studies that had been imparted on me this past year, and also to focus on our shared ideals as quarians with my subject in mind."

"My topic was inspired about all those trips we took to the northern waterways to discuss geological formations and how they were influential in shaping cultures," Roahn continued as a digital projection of the area in question became overlaid next to the blueprint of the mechanism that Roahn had initially loaded. "In particular, I noticed that Mentor Sodin's lessons on fluid dynamics seemed to be hinting at greater societal issues that quarians on Rannoch are still trying to overcome, namely the revamping or, in some cases, additions to the overall infrastructure. All of us know that in the twelve years since Rannoch has been reclaimed, we have been struggling to repair the damage sustained during the last few wars as well as the decay caused since we were forced to leave our homeworld behind. Quite simply, there are still many long term projects on our world that require our undue attention. I hoped to at least shed some light on one of them today."

Roahn was speaking in general terms, for she had been born after Rannoch had been taken back during the Reaper War, but it was still engrained in every young quarian's head how lucky they were that they were going to know what it was like to have a world of their own for the rest of their life.

"It is no big secret that Rannoch's infrastructure is inferior to nearly all comparable races in the galaxy," Roahn said as she lifted her arms in a grand fashion, enlarging another satellite image behind her. "But that should not be seen as a sore point for us. Rather, we should envision this as an opportunity. Take our capitol city, E'ryda, seen in this satellite image, here. Just fifteen miles to the south is a wide branch of one of the largest rivers on the planet. Millions of gallons of fresh water flows through that delta every hour – a water supply like that would satisfy the entire population in the city, and then some. The only problem is, the water needs to be abstracted for it to be used by the people."

Roahn then flipped to another image of yet another river, this one a depiction of a rapidly flowing ribbon of water with white crests foaming where rocks broke the surface. "But having a simple supply of water is not enough for us. We need the power necessary to disperse it to the people. All of the generation plants on Rannoch were severely damaged during the war, and some of the generators there have not even been repaired to their peak efficiency. But rather than having to deal with the inconveniences of procuring radioactive isotopes from foreign agencies to generate our electricity, hydroelectric power is a reliable source of electricity that we have the power to create by ourselves. The humans and the salarians still use hydroelectric power on their worlds, so why not us? There are still plenty of dams around the world, built centuries ago, that have not been sent repair crews to bring back online, due to a lack of resources. This is a situation where we already have 75% of the infrastructure in place – we just need focus our attention on the aspects that matter most for our people."

Then Roahn gave a giddy smile, hidden behind her blue visor, except for the fact that her eyes lidded upward in anticipation. "But what if, instead of simply bringing those dams back online again, we could make them better?"

The topographic images vanished to make room for the blueprint of Roahn's theoretical construction, the staff-like object. The bulky cylindrical item attached to the top of the staff's head was zoomed in at this point and various objects inside were being pointed out by little tick marks, explaining the functionalities of the item that Roahn was proposing. Roahn was glad to see that all of the mentors were rapt with attention as they fixated their gaze upon her provided materials. It was relieving to see that she had managed to hold their interest. There hardly anything worse than presenting to a distant audience.

"What I understood from Mentor Sodin's lessons is that we not only have an obligation to bring Rannoch back to the way it was but to make sure that we lift it to a better state than we could have imagined. That is, we should not settle for the status quo but should rely on our own ingenuity."

"This is a rough idea of the kind of device I would propose to make," Roahn now pointed, fighting hard to keep from speaking too fast in a garbled mess. "At its rudimentary core, this is what I call a geologic survey rider. Basically, I've combined existing technologies and inserted them into a simple construction, as you can see. The rider uses a variety of wavelengths to map out an area about a kilometer in radius in all directions, giving the user an accurate scan of the sort of geologic area they happen to be working on. Take a look – infrared scans pinpoint the dispersion of geologic formations, sonar pulses determine the density of particular deposits, and all of the digitized results, hundreds of terabytes in size, are instantly accessible on your omni-tool thanks to the rider's utilization of microwaves in the SHF band to send it to you in seconds."

Intrigued murmurs came from the mentors and Roahn paused a bit to take a few needed breaths as well as leave a gap for any potential questions. There was one, apparently. Mentor Jayt made a brief gesture in the air, a polite request to speak. "These technologies that you have previously mentioned," he started, "to which I'm referring to the infrared scanners, the sonar device, and the microwave transmitter, are these all theoretical to your project or does this have a firmer basis in reality?"

Roahn tried not to notice the brief sting, as she quickly realized that Jayt was simply asking for clarification rather than trying to pick her project apart.

"Oh, they are all completely based on existing appliances," Roahn bobbed her head. "Those components that you have listed are actually already available in several markets. I've even included the serial numbers from their respective companies in my schematics to prove my point. The housing for the components is my own design, but everything else can be attainable immediately, in fact."

Jayt liked the sound of that. "And the metal that you have listed to fabricate your housing from. What sort of material were you considering?

Roahn grinned. "Actually, I wasn't considering using metal as that could potentially interfere with the magnetic sensors."

"Ah. Right."

"I was thinking that a carbon-based mold would be more suitable. Make it more lightweight, you know."

One of the quarians, Ihren, the mentor that Roahn's friends said was the most boring (as well as the strictest with his expectations), leaned forward a bit. "The attention-to-detail is certainly impressive, Roahn," he said and Roahn beamed, "and I'm sure that if we had given you more time, you probably could construct a well-versed case for many of the committees trying to persuade the Conclave on where their attention should be focused on that planet."

Roahn could hardly believe her ears. Ihren rarely gave out compliments. She was going to pass!

"With that in mind," Ihren kept on speaking, "I'm interested to hear if you've given additional thought to what your contraption, this 'rider,' can provide. What sort of considerations were you intending for your project to provide the user?"

"Considerations? A few, definitely," Roahn provided instantly. "I'm hoping that this rider, if it gets put into practice, can provide recommendations for people on how to improve existing dam construction or suggest new places where dams can be placed in addition to their desired function. I think I mentioned the river near our capitol, yes? Low dams, or weirs, would be a perfect style of dam for our purposes, given that the valley there is not a typical floodplain nor do we need to divert water flow in any way. As for how these considerations are made, the scans the rider makes would typically look for factors such as permeability of the surrounding rock, if there are any earthquake faults in the area, the stability of nearby slopes in case of landslides, potential impacts on habitations and the environment, and effects of the water table on such a dam."

Ihren chuckled politely. "'A few,' indeed," he murmured to the deferential amusement of his colleagues.

"Very much like her mother," Sodin said, knowingly.

"No doubt," Jayt said. "Roahn, I think I speak for all of us, despite my candid speech, that you might have presented at least two projects worth of information during this session. Was compiling all of this… somewhat challenging for you?"

"Not really," Roahn shrugged. "It sort of occurred to me that if I wanted my presentation to make sense, I needed to provide a lot of context."

"But the technology behind these topographic scans… your ideas for microwave beaming… these could have easily been separated into their own topics."

"Perhaps, but I've been told that if I could do more than the bare minimum, I should always keep going."

"And who told you that?" Ihren leaned forward. "One of the mentors here?"

"No sir," Roahn straightened. "That would've been my mother."

The mentors all looked amongst themselves, the shadows falling across them once the glow from Roahn's omni-tool faded. The color drained from the room, the elder quarians now looked like sketches of charcoal upon thick paper, the diffused glow from the sun coming through white instead of orange.

"Roahn," Sodin spread her hands, "What kind of path do you want for your life? Judging from your enthusiasm, it's plainly obvious that you've taken a keen interest in the field of engineering."

Roahn nodded. "I've had a lot of fun with that for the term."

Sodin seemed proud at that. "I can tell you that, if you're still interested in the subject, there are many apprenticeships on Rannoch that definitely correspond to your interests. Why, in a few years, as you are probably aware, you'll be eligible to actually apply for these apprenticeships. If you keep this up, I have no doubt that you will manage to secure a slot."

Roahn glowed from the praise. Not only had she obviously passed her project, but her mentors were offering up career advice in such a warm fashion! It was difficult not to jump for joy but that notion was easily quashed when Mentor Jayt spoke next.

"Do you think your father has any opinion on where your interests might lead to? Sometimes the advice of a parent helps the focus of the student."

Something was boiling within Roahn's gut and she felt a scowl come to her face. Why did every action in her life have to revolve around her damn father? He wasn't even here! In fact, Roahn had no idea if her father had any interests of his own. He never _talked_ , for crying out loud! It was all just long moments spent in sullen silence, hoping that his own child did not notice the churning conflicts that were battling in his head, a desperate fight for the need to look his own daughter in the eye and explain—

"I don't think so," Roahn said as mildly as she could muster.

That did not seem to be the answer that Jayt was looking for, but thankfully, he did not press the subject further. Instead, he made a little murmur to himself and made a quick note on his omni-tool.

Sodin looked at her colleagues before focusing her attention back to Roahn. "I think that concludes it for today, child. You did very well, Roahn. Your family will no doubt be proud of the efforts that you have demonstrated throughout the term."

"Thank you, Mentor Sodin," Roahn dipped her head in respect.

"I look forward to seeing you next term. _Keelah ni'veh_."

" _Keelah ni'veh_ , mentors."

Taking that as her cue that she was dismissed, Roahn smartly turned on her heels and walked back out the way she had come. Hot sunlight blasted into her face as the door opened, but the visor rapidly darkened, filtering out the blinding rays in a nanosecond. As usual, the heat of the day failed to make an impression upon her skin.

Roahn smiled warmly as she saw her throng of friends approach her, eager to find out how her presentation had went. But her smile suddenly chilled for a brief moment from the knowledge that she was about to leave this place… and head back home for a while.

Her lingering words to her mentors found their way back to her tongue.

" _Keelah ni'veh_ ," she whispered.

By the homeworld I look upon today.

* * *

A few hours later and Roahn and her friends were all shooting glowing looks amongst each other in the main hold of the shuttle as the vehicle shot through the sky. Subtle vibrations jittered through the craft as it left the academy far behind, now headed south towards the capitol, where most of the students' parents would come to pick them up and take them home, at least until next term. The interior of the craft was windowless, so the passengers were unable to see the shuttle spear through the puffy white cloud formations as it hurtled through the atmosphere, but even if it did, the kids inside were too engrossed in their own conversations to stare out of the window.

Roahn and all of her friends, her bunkmates, were seated next to each other, somewhat relieved to be offered a temporary reprieve in their studies. They had all passed their term presentations, having impressed upon their mentors that they had, in fact, been paying close attention to their teachings throughout the past few months. Now they could relax and focus on other topics, anything besides schooling.

Roahn felt an elbow nudge her ribs sharply. She looked over to see Nee leaning over towards her. "Hey, Ro!" the girl said eagerly, "what are you doing tomorrow?"

"No idea," Ro honestly replied. "Why?"

Nee gestured amongst Cevni and Zayhn for emphasis. "We're meeting up in the morning to go exploring. Also, I've got something cool to show all of you tomorrow."

Now Roahn gave a sly grin. "Another action figure?"

"Ancestors, no!" Nee laughed. "It's way better than that. Trust me."

Roahn arced an eyebrow but this gesture was partially veiled from her visor. Even so, it appeared that Nee got the gist. "Okay, I'm certainly interested," Roahn said. "When did you want to meet?"

"A few hours after daybreak. We'll come over to you at your house."

"Nee, my house is miles away from yours!" Nee lived in the capitol city whereas Roahn lived in the outskirts, where the property initially established by her parents had an impressive amount of acres in their name, but that came at a lack of neighbor interaction, with what the main city being a good fifteen-minute transit at a fair clip.

Nee did not seem to be disheartened at this fact. Actually, she merely seemed emboldened. "I've got that covered. Don't worry."

As much as Roahn wanted to ask Nee about the specifics of her little logistical problem, an announcement from the pilot indicating that they will land at E'ryda port in less than two minutes caused her to lose her train of thought. The chatter in the shuttle immediately died down to a muted throb as the engines of the craft slowly began to whine to a lower pitch.

The acceleration dampeners embedded into the craft meant that Roahn was unable to feel the bump as the shuttle gently glided down onto its landing pad, back onto solid ground. It was only when the doors roughly slid open on their ragged rails did all of the kids stand up, very much a Pavlovian response, and eagerly shuffle out into open air. Hazy sunlight streamed in, immediately followed by a blast of warmth, and in seconds Roahn found herself blinking in the arid heat, her _sehni_ flapping from a salty ocean breeze.

The landing pad was on a small crested plateau that overlooked the capitol city down below. E'ryda was all a ramshackle collection of hastily made shacks coupled with blocks upon blocks of prefabricated structures, the exact same types that Roahn had seen at the academy. Construction on a few residential towers had begun a few years ago, outsourced to a human company, but progress had been so agonizingly slow that the skyline of the city itself was still relatively low to the ground. Millions of quarians down there, all fending for themselves, living just a few steps above total squalor. But at least the people were happy with what they had – after three centuries of every single individual having to share a room the size of a broom closet up in space with five other people, a three-room shack was practically a mansion. Roahn then remembered that her friends were planning to meet her at her house tomorrow and she shuffled her feet on the pad, suddenly anxious. Her house had been designed and paid for completely out of the usual bureaucratic loop on Rannoch – her parents had amassed quite a large amount of money to pay for a substantial home that, all things considered, could house four quarian families alone. It made Roahn feel somewhat guilty that she got to live in such luxury while her friends barely had carpets covering their floors.

All the more reason why Roahn was so eager for the next term to start. At least there she was more of an equal amongst her peers.

One by one, her friends departed into the waiting arms of their parents, and Roahn bid them all goodbye. She would see them all in a matter of hours, so there were no longing feelings threatening to tug upon her heartstrings. She was too smart for that.

The crowd of children and parents gradually thinned out in mere minutes as more kids left for their home. Roahn swiveled left and right, trying to see if she could spot the person she was looking for in the mass, but she found herself out of luck, and her stomach began to sink as if she had swallowed a lead weight.

"For once in your life…" she spoke to herself, imagining anyway that her chiding words would impact the person they were meant for. "Come on. Come on. Where _are_ you?"

Roahn was becoming more and more incredulous with each passing second. Did he not know that today was the day that she was coming home? Had he not been getting all those messages from the academy explicitly instructing him to be here at this spot at this very moment? Roahn frantically gulped down her anger, trying to adopt her mother's more reasonable attitude and mindset.

That sort of mindset was quickly discarded, seeing as how, at this point, Roahn was the only person left standing on the pad. Even the shuttle had departed ten minutes ago, not at all content on waiting to see if all of the passengers had been met by their guardians on the ground.

Now completely angry, Roahn stomped her foot on the ground and hurled her fists downward in frustration, an annoyed grunt escaping through her throat. It had now been thirty minutes since she had landed and there was no indication at all that someone was coming to pick her up. Beside herself, Roahn frantically fidgeted in place as she struggled to rein in her emotions, to keep her from exploding with fury and vitriol at her father's failure to remember this day, of all days.

Needless to say, she failed.

"Unbelievable," Roahn growled in a frustrated haze. "Nice job, _bosh'tet_. Really nice job, dad!"

If there was any moment to use one of her mother's favorite swear words, to let it ring abound within the nearby canyon walls, then there would never be a more opportune time for Roahn to let loose.

So she did so in earnest.

 _Keelah, that felt good!_

* * *

 **A/N: As you can tell, no doubt, I've failed to learn my lesson about taking any long-winded breaks between stories. Suffice to say that in the interim when I have nothing to write about, my overactive imagination ramps back up - clearly my work ethic's worst enemy. So, here we are again.**

 **Of course, I'm sure you're all wondering exactly what _Cenotaph_ is specifically going to entail. Well, my main intent with this story is to portray an unusual family dynamic revolving around Shepard and Roahn, his daughter, in a postwar setting - the details of which will become a lot clearer with subsequent chapters. This is not intended to be part of a new series, but will merely stand on its own. If you are familiar with my usual methodology of favoring stories with a dark and depressing edge, rest assured that this will not get down to some of the lows that I've portrayed in prior stories. No, this will not be like _Patriarch_ , mark my words, but there will be a somewhat cynical edge regarding a few concepts further down the line. As to what that means, well, you're just going to have to wait and see!**

 **On a side note, I have no idea what my current release schedule is going to look like in the near future. I may be somewhat occupied to the point where I might not get to work on _Cenotaph_ as much as I like, considering my current obligations. That being said, I will take into account audience interest as well as my own desire to never leave a story unfinished as motivators to devote a fair amount of time to this story every week.**

 **I look forward to hearing all of your thoughts on _Cenotaph_ and I hope that you enjoy it!**


	2. Chapter 2: Hero Incognito

" _Explain to me, Mr. Koenig, why is it that you believe that corporations like yours—we're referring to Chimera in this case—feel that it is necessary to act as an unburdened police force so far into this lengthy period of sustained nonaggression? Surely you're not expecting a new opposing force to suddenly rear its head anytime soon?"  
_ Sen. Songau – Micronesia

" _Begging your pardon, ma'am, but you do realize that a race of alien machines nearly made all of us to be extinct? I'm sure a person like you can recognize the value of being prepared for the possibility of that happening all over again."  
_ Erich Koenig – CEO, Chimera

* * *

 _Rannoch_

At least the weather was nice.

A burst of chilling sea air suddenly spat itself across the foaming aqua blue waters of the Rannochian ocean, sending up curtains of sand to fall frustratingly at the feet of the lone figure who walked along the beach. The gentle waves created a constant roaring crash, soft enough to be pleasant to the ears, yet loud enough to drown everything else out.

The man stood far away from the sea, far enough that the waters could not lap at his boots. He folded his hands in his pockets and took a deep breath, taking in the sun upon his face as well as the salty inhalation of sea-encrusted air.

It could almost be Earth, he mused to himself. The land here looked a lot like it, as did the ocean, and the sky. But the memory of that planet was a fleeting shadow to him. He had hardly spent any time on Earth at all. He had been born in space, raised on a cruiser and had lived an entire childhood surrounded by metal, only artificial gravity holding him down. What did _he_ know of Earth?

For that matter, what did he know of this place?

Opening his eyes again, he kept walking, his lips tightly pursed together.

The man kept trekking along the beach for another half-hour, not taking any more pauses to admire the scenery. His pace was brisk and purposeful. A controlled gait driven by a need to remain active. He was walking fast enough that his body was producing enough heat to keep him safe from the chill of the sea air. That, and the simple black sweatshirt he wore did an excellent job in keeping his core temperature regulated.

The morning fog was now becoming less constant as it rolled off the ocean. The rising sun was slashing gashes into the gently churning mist, allowing the man the first glimpse of his house from atop the nearby cliff face since he had set out for his daily hike, the stone foundation glowing a sandy color in the light.

The man tilted his wrist on habit, just to confirm that his pedometer on his omni-tool would show that he had hiked his six mile allotment for the day. The app showed exactly that and the man was satisfied.

There was a sloping path cut into the hills at the man's left, leading up towards where his house was. The man abruptly turned and strode perpendicular to the sea, stepping up the path with ease. When he neared the top, his stride had barely slowed from the exertion, but he frowned all the same as a twinge in his left leg began to flicker upon his consciousness. Some wounds never heal, the man thought bitterly as he gently kneaded the ligaments in his knee.

It was now a two minute walk to reach the man's house, but he took a detour before that, choosing to head over to his right, where a gigantic _onosho_ tree towered near the cliff's edge. Besides the nearby house, the tree was the only thing within the man's vicinity that could provide shade from the piercing rays of the sun.

The _onosho_ was a sturdy tree with a thick trunk, knotted branches, and razor-thin leaves that looked almost like spears. It was a hardy tree, but then again, most plants had to be hardy in order to survive on a planet like Rannoch. _Onoshos_ were incredibly adept at taking in whatever water they could from the parched soil and storing it in their trunk. Given that if no outside influences were to disturb the lifecycle of an _onosho_ , there was little doubt that they could reach ages upwards of ten thousand years old. This particular _onosho_ was, according to biologists, only a shade over two thousand years old. The man standing next to the towering tree might as well have been a barely discernable blip in its natural life span.

There were two objects at the base of the _onosho_. One of these was a simply cut stone bench, made out of a smoothened granite, polished to a dull sheen. The man headed over to sit upon this bench, emitting a groan as his ligaments strained in protest. Now seated, the man turned his attention to the other object next to the tree, an onyx-black obelisk upon which micro-holograms projected a brief series of words in flowing and golden Khelish script an inch away from the featureless surface.

A monument.

A headstone.

 _Tali'Shepard vas Rannoch_ , it read.

 _Born: Liveship Rayya, 2162. Died: Rannoch, 2196_.

 _Husband: John. Daughter: Roahn._

At the bottom was another inscription.

 _After time adrift on open stars, along tides of light and through shoals of dust, I will return to where I began._

"Yes," the man spoke for the first time today. "You certainly have returned, my dear."

Visiting the grave of his wife was a routine that John Shepard had never failed to deviate from in two years. He always spent a little while here after his morning hike, taking in a tiny bubble of time within the day to remain close to his bondmate, taking solace in the fact that he could not be any nearer to her if he tried.

A week ago, it had been exactly two years since his fiercest love had died. Shepard had laid wildflowers next to the obelisk back then – a tender sentiment steeped in human tradition. Those flowers still remained albeit they had wilted where they lay on the ground, their colors dulled, the petals wrinkled. Shepard flexed his fingers laboriously, now mindful of the fact that it was starting to become harder to breathe now that he was so close to his wife.

So close… yet so far away. What he would give to simply hold Tali in his arms again…

Ten years. Ten years of marriage. It had been the perfect coda to what Shepard had considered would have been his final hurrah for the galaxy. Would he not be entitled to such a finality? The marriage to his best friend, his comrade-in-arms, had been his greatest choice, his most important decision that he ever felt that he made in his life. An impressive connotation, considering the man's achievements.

Shepard looked upon the moments he had spent with Tali in the past quite fondly. They had always made a strong pair, both on the battlefield and off it. Mutual admiration was bound to occur between them, considering their deep attractions. Love had soon bloomed between the two as they had remained close to the other, any notions of race incompatibilities being thoroughly quashed in mere moments. Truthfully, for either Shepard or Tali, the fact that they were of differing races was a topic that had barely caused them to entertain any second thoughts as to what their connection meant for the both of them. Even though there had been moments where their relationship had been tested quite severely in the past, they still had managed to overcome all obstacles, drowning out their misgivings to become closer and closer as a couple.

Marriage had been little more than a formality for the two of them in the end after what they had already gone through together, but they both liked the idea that their relationship had legal credence. It was perhaps the one choice Shepard had decided on that had gone off without a hitch, as perfect as he could imagine.

The entire topic of Shepard marrying Tali had been brought up between them mere days after the war had ended. Shepard, still recovering in a hospital and suffering from temporary memory loss, had asked Tali to marry him while he was still in bed, with most of his body bandaged and half of his limbs encased in stiff casts. Humorously, Tali had accepted before Shepard had even managed to finish the sentence. With the two of them having been frustrated in the past about having to be separated from each other for months on end all due to their duties to their species, Shepard and Tali wasted no time in tying the knot. They had married a week later after he had proposed, using the hospital's church as the place to carry out all the formalities. Shepard was still confined to a wheelchair at that point, still a very long way from healing, but he had made an effort to stand (while using crutches) when it came time to verbally announce his adoration for his bride.

The next ten years came at Shepard in a blur. Even now, he still had trouble trying to control the whirlwind of events that had occurred at that time. Building the house on Rannoch. Tali getting pregnant (courtesy of a sperm donor). His daughter's birth. Raising Roahn on Rannoch. Looking over Tali when she had suddenly fallen sick.

And in the blink of an eye, Tali had gone.

It had left him completely dumbstruck when she had passed. One day Shepard could have held her warm hand in his and in the next, there had been nothing left to hold. Just emptiness where there had been someone full of life and love.

And now he was alone.

On the bench, Shepard's hands clenched together. "I can't stop thinking of you!" he whispered to himself in frustration, wanting so desperately to see the day in a new light, no longer haunted by his memories.

Yet at the same time Shepard did not want the memories to leave him. Truthfully, he _yearned_ for them, no matter how much they hurt him to revisit. Each time he thought of Tali, it felt like someone was taking a knife to his insides, slicing him up into several million pieces, churning his gut and raking the interior of his lungs, causing his drawing breaths to become painful.

Right on cue, that wonderful voice burst into his brain.

" _Oh, Shepard! I didn't see you there."_

"Damn it," Shepard grimaced as he held his head in his hands, his fingers tearing into the flesh of his scalp. "Don't remember. Don't remember. Don't remember."

But he remembered.

 _Shepard's grin was genuine as he walked closer to the engineering deck while the searing blue light wafted from the drive core of the Normandy SR-1. There was an audible thrum that burst into his eardrums every few seconds as a result of the ring locks temporarily displacing the energy fields, but Shepard found that he could dissociate himself from the discomfort quite easily. Making the rounds on his ship and talking to his crew was the best way to relieve stress, he felt._

" _Sorry, Tali," he said sheepishly as he walked over to the quarian's station. "Didn't mean to startle you."_

 _The quarian waved a three-fingered hand. "It's no trouble. Did you need something?"_

" _Just wanted to check up on you. There was some heavy fighting down there on Feros. It wasn't a walk in the park by any means. I wanted to know how you were doing."_

 _The days following Shepard's induction into the Spectre ranks had not been separated by a whole lot of downtime. Seizing the opportunity, Shepard had assembled a motley crew formed from Alliance members and additional individuals, Tali included, that had provided invaluable help to get him even this far. Assigned to track down Saren, a rogue Spectre, Shepard had embarked upon his mission to follow up every lead possible, which had already led him to some of the strangest places in the galaxy. Feros, their latest destination, had been nail bitingly tense from the moment they had touched down on the planet – there had also been some horrors that the world had been hiding that none of the crew could have possibly been prepared for. Shepard would sympathize if some of comrades were starting to feel burnt out already._

 _But Tali just shrugged. "It definitely wasn't pretty down there, I'll give you that. I don't think I'll ever look at plants the same way again, though. But I'm still fit for duty, Commander. Doing well as ever."_

" _That's good to hear. It seems like everyone else has been doing fine since Feros, though Garrus is griping about this ship's lack of alcohol to help take the edge off. Not that I can blame him – those Thorian creepers were enough to give anyone nightmares."_

" _Somehow, when I signed up to join you, fighting acid-spewing plant zombies was not exactly how I envisioned this playing out."_

 _Shepard chuckled at that. "I wouldn't have believed me either if I knew we had that in store for us, either. Anyway, it's over, and we're one step closer to finding Saren. That being said, you've earned a break if you want it, Tali."_

 _Tali did not respond to that right away. "Saren's not going to wait for us, so I won't."_

 _A ghost of a smile crept up to Shepard's lips. "Tali, you do realize that we left Feros eighteen hours ago?"_

" _Has it been that long?" Tali looked distracted as she briefly looked up at the ceiling. "I guess it has. Why?"_

" _Tali. The ship's logs indicate that right after the mission you've been here at the engine core ever since. Eighteen consecutive hours at your post."_

" _That sounds about correct," Tali said as she fiddled with an engine temperature control at her station._

 _Shepard tried not to sigh out loud. Tali did not seem to be getting his drift. "Tali, when I said earlier that you've earned a break, I meant to say that you_ need _a break," he firmly emphasized. "It would reflect rather badly upon me if I let a member of the engineering crew collapse from exhaustion. Especially after a mission. That doesn't look good on any report no matter how you try to spin it. I mean, when was the last time you slept?"_

 _Strangely, Tali did not seem to be so concerned with this tidbit. "I'm completely fine," she protested, still concentrating on various holographic metrics, her fingers a blur upon a nearby keypad. "I don't feel exhausted at all. Trust me. You don't have to worry."_

" _Forgive me, but I have to worry," Shepard said as he reached out and gently stilled Tali's hands. He felt her limber wrist through her enviro-suit and found that there was a barely discernable jolt that ran through her the second he touched her. "Look, Tali, I know that I'm not the archetypical military superior that people might immediately think of when they see me and the rank that I hold, but there are some tenets that I feel that I have to keep in place. First of all, anyone who goes out on the missions gets an immediate off-shift, no exceptions. Secondly, our shifts are only supposed to be twelve hours in length. That's kind of been an Alliance mandate since its inception – and for good reason. People do crash if you push them too hard."_

" _I've worked for far longer than just eighteen hours before, you know," Tali hinted, somewhat in amusement._

" _I'm not questioning your work ethic, Tali. Lord knows you've proven yourself to me that you are incredibly more than capable of handling your responsibilities. No, I'd just say that you'd do an awful lot to my peace of mind if you would relax. Grab a few hours of sleep, that sort of thing. I don't know how things were done on the flotilla, but I would feel a hell of a lot better if I weren't thinking that you were trying to work yourself to death."_

 _Now Tali's fingers froze upon her console and Shepard lifted his hand away. "Is that… an official order, Shepard?"_

 _Shepard almost raised an eyebrow, finding himself caught off guard a bit by the quarian's sultry tone._

" _Technically, I can't give you an_ official _order," Shepard shrugged blithely. "You're not Alliance personnel and being a Spectre doesn't really give me the authority to order everyone around. Just… I'm asking you, as your commander and… as someone who would consider you to be a friend, to take it easy every now and then. For your sake… and mine as well. The ship's not going to blow up without you, you know."_

 _The quarian seemed puzzled by what Shepard just said and Shepard flushed. Had he said something that he shouldn't have? The hairs on the back of his neck began to prickle, which stayed that way until Tali spoke next._

" _Are we… friends, Shepard?"_

 _Aw, the hell with it._

" _Sure," Shepard shrugged again, trying to seem as innocent as possible. "If you're technically not my subordinate, I can't imagine what else you'd be to me. Unless… you would feel otherwise?"_

 _He tensed himself, ready to take the brunt if he had overstepped his bounds._

 _But a hidden sigh passed through his body at Tali's next words._

" _I think I'd like you as a friend, too."_

"More than that," Shepard said aloud to himself as he returned his thoughts to the here and now on Rannoch, the ocean winds rippling at his back. "You were that… and so much more, my dear."

Finally standing up from the bench, the sun now creeping into his eyes, Shepard gave a final, solemn nod towards his wife's grave before he slowly trudged back towards the house in order to start his day.

* * *

On Earth, a common word to describe a house like Shepard's would be _cozy_.

On Rannoch, that same house would be called _gargantuan_.

In any case, it was certainly the largest house that Shepard had ever owned in his life but he did not necessarily feel that it was a flagrant display of wealth in an ostentatious manner, at least by human standards. The home itself was built from stone, glass, and steel, using modern sensibilities to guide the overall style, and stood two stories tall. Rock cut from a nearby quarry had gone into the foundation of the dwelling, the blueprints of which had been lent by a renowned architectural firm from the Citadel. Tali had helped influence the design of the house before it was going to be built – Shepard lacked an eye for that sort of detail so he let his wife do what she wanted. In any case, the end result was more than satisfactory to him. It let him know that he had married someone with impeccable taste.

As Shepard stepped into the foyer from outside, a tiny alarm began to ping at him. That would be the decontamination sensors embedded into the doorway alerting him that he was carrying in potential contaminants from outside. Shepard disregarded the alarms. The ventilation system in the house was state of the art and in a couple of hours he would be decontaminated enough by the filtration chemicals that subtly pumped through the building. As a human, germs were the last thing on his mind that he had to worry about.

Shepard was feeling a little hungry, but he had seen on his omni-tool that someone had tried to call him while he had been out and about. Shepard wanted to get back to this person as quickly as possible. Breakfast could wait.

He quickly maneuvered into the kitchen, though, to grab at a tiny tin package in a brushed steel cupboard before he ascended the stairs to his office. The office was a tight room comprised of an aluminum chair and a desk made out of magnesium and a synthetic wood. A gigantic window that spanned from the floor to the ceiling took up an entire wall, providing Shepard with an immaculate view of the ocean.

The sight alone would have been awe-inspiring, had Shepard not been a witness to it every day.

Shepard then placed the tin upon the desk and opened it, withdrawing a plastic injector filled with a sickly-yellow fluid. The label read "CBLB502" upon it and various medical warning labels were pasted below the description. Shepard shook the injector almost absentmindedly, watching the tiny vial of liquid slosh around in the cramped space.

Lifting up his shirt, Shepard then pressed the injector against the skin of his abdomen, pinching an area of the subcutaneous layer there. After the locking mechanism was deployed, Shepard depressed the button and felt a tiny sting against his skin. The pain was almost negligible. Sharp finger thwacks hurt more than this. Shepard counted to ten, waiting for the liquid to be injected fully into his body before he relaxed his pinch upon his skin, simultaneously lifting the injector up and away.

There was a nearby bag made out of thick plastic in a drawer. Shepard opened it up and dropped the used injector into it. He then pressed a soft cloth against the injection site to mop up any beads of blood that might have occurred, tossing the fabric aside less than a minute later.

Sighing in relief, Shepard caressed his face, feeling the roughness of his beard against his fingers. He had been letting his facial hair grow for a few years now, and as a result, he looked pretty straggly. He trimmed his beard on occasion just to keep it under control, but it had come in thickly and with a vengeance, like the hair was angry at being unable to have grown for years on end.

The same fate extended to Shepard's head, where he was now boasting a full head of hair. When he was in the Alliance, Shepard had made sure to keep his hair closely cropped to his head, barely exceeding even a few millimeters in length. Now, with no more restrictions upon him, Shepard had relaxed his grooming policy and had let his hair grow out to a few inches. The hairs were thin and unkempt, and Shepard was constantly fussing with it. Compared to how he looked a decade ago, the man was now almost completely unrecognizable.

But Shepard's hair was only half of the most shocking changes that had cropped up over the years. The most distinguishing aspect was that his hair, instead of it taking on a dark and healthy color, had paled to an almost unearthly white.

Forty-four years old and already he was looking more than twice his age. The grayness had set upon his hair at an alarming rate, turning completely white within a three-year span. The doctors were all baffled at this development. None of them could provide a firm diagnosis. The only hypothesis any of them had was that his hair color change could be attributed to the massive amounts of stress he had undergone ever since he started fighting the Reapers. It made sense, as stress was one of the leading factors for premature graying of the hair. But to have the entire head of hair grow gray consistently? That was certainly rare.

Shepard did not bother trying to argue that point, in any case. Stress was very much a plausible reason for why this had occurred, considering his previous occupation. How many times had he been at death's door only to bounce right back? Hell, at one point he actually _had_ died, only for him to be miraculously brought back to life. If prematurely graying was the price he had to pay for his involvement in saving the galaxy, then so be it.

He still was rather grumpy at the knowledge that he looked to be a hundred years old, though.

Annoyed that he had become distracted again from his inner thoughts, Shepard reached out and tapped on a few keys that had become displayed upon a glowing keyboard just above the desk. The address for his previous caller was input into the system (he had gone to the trouble to install a QEC system within the house beforehand for better reception) and the vidcom signal went through immediately. The recipient picked up almost at once and a sharply-uniformed man stepped into existence from where the holographic crystals were positioned within the room, his entire body lit up with an electric blue color – the color of a drive core.

"Admiral Hackett," Shepard said in greeting as the holographic figure folded his arms behind his back. "Or… should I say, _Defense Minister_ Hackett? It's good to hear from you again."

The man on the other end smiled back at Shepard warmly, his finely groomed goatee containing a bit more color than Shepard's beard, despite being several years older in age. Admiral Steven Hackett was a legend in both the Alliance and in many other circles, his reputation very closely intertwined with Shepard's. He had enlisted in the Alliance at a young age and was one of the rare examples of a conscript managing to make it to the rank of admiral – a testament to his performance and respect to the Alliance. He had made a name for himself during the First Contact War, the events of which had fast-tracked his ascendancy to admiral, and his tactics at delaying the Reaper invasion just twelve years ago had cemented his name into the annals of the Alliance navy.

Hackett had also been one of the three individuals that had put forward Shepard's name for consideration as humanity's first Spectre, tactical agents for the Citadel Council. Some would say that decision singlehandedly saved the galaxy, considering how Shepard utilized his new positioning. However things might have turned out over the years, Shepard considered Hackett to be a close friend, not to mention there was hardly anyone else that Shepard would respect so highly. Hackett was a man that was not afraid to speak his mind, something that Shepard found refreshing in comparison to politicians consistently trying to skirt around offending anyone at all. Hackett did not care who he offended because he felt that speaking the truth was more important than trying to be tactful.

" _You can still call me Admiral, Shepard_ ," the other man intoned politely, a slight delay affecting his voice due to the extreme long distance separating the two individuals, " _They didn't take my rank away when I accepted the post. At the very least,_ _I'm glad to see that you seem to be doing well._ "

Immediately succeeding the war, Hackett had been offered the role of Defense Minister to the Systems Alliance, a position that many had thought was akin to a long-deserved promotion. With humanity's fleets in disrepair, and with a galaxy in peacetime, Hackett took the job knowing that his career in the navy would have come crashing to a halt very soon. This way, Hackett could immerse himself into the reunification of the galaxy as well as play an integral role into building Earth back up again.

Shepard gave a dry chuckle. "About as well as can be. Things have been quiet around the house lately."

" _How's Roahn been doing?_ "

"Doing fine, last I heard," Shepard said. Truthfully, he had no idea how Roahn was at the academy. Her last few messages to him had been somewhat brief and, dare he say, terse.

" _Nothing out of the ordinary, I assume?_ "

"Not for a while, no."

Hackett gave a sympathetic smile. " _I am sorry that I was unable to check up on you last week, Shepard. I would have wanted nothing more than to look in on my friend, but things at the homefront have been getting rather unpleasant as of late_."

Shepard waved it off. "Being in the Alliance has taught me that one's schedule is subject to change at the drop of a hat. It's no big deal. The politicians giving you much trouble back on Earth?"

The bulk of Hackett's duties required him to remain in constant communication with senators, representatives, and various officials all the way up to the Prime Minister. And so far, every single politician had irked Hackett greatly. He felt that everyone in the government was too transparent with their resolve and their incessant nagging for political favors put his mood at a constant strain. Perhaps if he knew how troublesome his colleagues would be to him, he probably would have refused the Defense Minister offer when the opportunity had been bestowed upon him.

" _The quid pro quo continues_ ," Hackett said stiffly. " _I have an entire legion's worth of assistants working to field requests for additional manpower across the planet and our colonies, yet I'm still beleaguered by overblown pleas for aid. Too much broken glass to clean up, in essence. Twelve years and we're still cleaning up the mess the Reapers left behind. We just don't have the bodies to take a hammer to these problems._ "

"I sympathize. I'd come over to Berlin to help you out, but you'd know the sort of trouble I'd get into if I took a single step on Earth soil."

Hackett, along with the rest of the government bodies, were all based in Berlin ever since Arcturus Station had been destroyed by the Reapers. Utilizing a well-known city to place a government was simply a cheaper alternative than building a new space station from scratch. The economics certainly made sense on paper.

" _You'd know I'd protect you, Shepard_."

"For how long? I wouldn't be much use to you if you had to store me into a broom closet to keep me out of the public eye. Things are different. I have a daughter now. It's just too much of a blind risk for me to come back."

Hackett frowned. " _I understand, Shepard. I realize how frustrating this whole ordeal has been to you. Or rather, what you've been through. If it makes you feel any better, all these years I've been desperately trying to rescind the charges levelled against you but the judicial branch consistently refuses to throw out your case. And thanks to the current statute of limitations, those charges won't go away for quite a while. So we're still stuck and no one's happy about it. Believe me, no one wants to see you return from your exile more than me."_

Exile. Shepard almost barked in laughter. It was an apt description for his current state. Why else would he have languished here on Rannoch with nary another human for billions of miles? Loyalty to his wife, perhaps, but with her gone, what was left tying him here?

Maybe it was the fact that he had an entire world pushing him back.

Shepard sighed. "One would think that the Defense Minister would have more say in something like this."

" _That was what I believed as well. But my influence is vastly limited outside of my scope of operations. In all honesty, I called you today specifically to give you an update on your current… predicament_."

Shepard raised an eyebrow, also colored snow-white. "Judging from the fact that you did not lead with this tidbit, I daresay I'm not going to like what this entails."

Now Hackett had on a look very much like a mouse would if he had been bidden to bell a cat. " _No, I suppose not._ "

"Great. All right, then. Hit me with it."

" _You have extranet access?_ "

"Yeah. Why?"

" _You might want to turn to a news site._ "

Somewhat apprehensive, Shepard turned back to his desk and keyed in a command for the holoscreen to project above the wooden desk. Flipping to one of the more popular news sites, Shepard was immediately greeted by a bevy of images showcasing red and black armored troopers marching upon a compound within a lush green forest. Red and black – those weren't Alliance colors, Shepard noted with a frown. Several camera angles had caught the foreign-looking troopers hunched down in attack formations, opening fire amongst several blurry inhabitants, the jungle peppered with debris as the trees and bushes were felled from the crossfire.

 _Chimera Dispatched to India_ , one article read. _Alien National Plot Foiled, Eleven Dead_ , another blared. _Chimera PMC Responsible for Jungle Operation_ , was one final headline near the bottom of the page.

Shepard clicked on one of the articles. Chimera again, he mused. He had seen so many similar articles of this nature to know that something was quite off about this group. In the years after the war, the private military corporation Chimera had been responsible for more than two dozen incursions on Earth and her colonies. Wherever Chimera was deployed, breaking news followed. It was like Chimera was destined to sow havoc and chaos in its wake, to leave scores of dead bodies behind as a result of its barely legal authority.

"The Chimera problem again?" Shepard asked out loud.

" _Their fourth controversial posting in less than a year_ ," Hackett affirmed.

Shepard hid a grimace with his hand. "So what the hell happened this time?"

" _Apparently someone in the Delhi refugee zone saw a group of batarians all head into a single building at once. They got twitchy and called the hotline. Thought that maybe these aliens were up to no good, for whatever reason. Chimera took the call. And… well, they botched the whole thing, as you just saw. You're just seeing the initial reports. In a few hours you're going to learn that the place Chimera hit was not a safehouse for the batarians to discuss some terroristic plot or anything of that ilk, but was simply nothing but a brothel. Illegal within city limits, yes, but hardly warranting the excessive force that Chimera utilized_."

"Shoot first, ask questions later?"

" _Something like that. Some senators are going to raise holy hell about the issue, but you know as well as I do that nothing's going to be done about Chimera running amok on Earth. In twelve years, nothing's changed_."

"God damn," Shepard blew air from his mouth.

Chimera had been nothing but a thorn in the side of the Systems Alliance ever since the PMC had won the bid to act as Earth's police force in the interim after the war. The CEO of Chimera, Erich Koenig, was an academy washout that had come into a large inheritance by way of good fortune and had founded the PMC with that money. Koenig had been previously mocked as a trust-fund baby that had been born on third and thought he had hit a triple, and for being a loudmouthed idiot that tried to capitalize on his service record, despite it being pitifully brief. However, any japes at Koenig's expense quickly (and suspiciously) dried up as soon as Koenig had submitted a bid to the Alliance lower than what any other corporation had been offered at the time for his PMC to become the Alliance's newest mobile military force. Naturally, Chimera got the contract from the government in what had to be record time.

Since then, they had been nothing but trouble.

The Chimera troopers were easily identifiable from their bulky red and black armor and heavy weaponry in addition to the destruction that was usually left behind after they were finished with a certain area. That was only one aspect of the sorts of controversies that constantly surrounded the company. Another curious item was the fact that, despite all this time after the war, Chimera still maintained an active contract with the Alliance. Their original license was to operate for five years maximum, but the Senate voted to extend that term for five more years… and then for five more… until finally Chimera received an indefinite contract from the government, to be rescinded only when there was proof beyond a reasonable doubt that Chimera's services would no longer be needed.

Some of the general public had their suspicions, but extranet blogs were not going to convince any of the senators on the committee to just rescind the Chimera contract.

Critics of Chimera would staunchly claim that the corporation was a source of redundant costs to the Alliance right now. After all, Chimera had only been employed out of a desperation to maintain a militarily-capable fighting force. Now that twelve years had gone by, a sizable chunk of the Alliance military's infrastructure had been restored both in terms of equipment and warm bodies. For some, it was finally time to cut the cord with Chimera and sever all ties to the controversial organization, but that opinion was a minority amongst the Senate, unfortunately. General opinion was more aligned to the tune of what the majority party had to say right now – and they _supported_ keeping Chimera in their employ.

So, despite the shadiness of utilizing Chimera as a police force, not to mention the hundreds of corpses that they had been responsible for delivering from their piss-poor handlings of tense situations, Chimera had been reaping the benefits and the revenues from acting as the Alliance's attack dog, to the consternation of those in the government that were considerably less hawkish. Hackett himself had tried to remove Chimera several times over the years but his efforts were constantly thwarted by one particular man in the government.

The man who's digitized face Shepard was staring at right now.

" _Raynor Larsen_ ," Hackett said with a grim look as both he and Shepard looked upon the face of the man in the broadcast. " _Political party leader, senior senator from Norway, and former Attorney General. Any moves I've made towards Chimera, Larsen's been pushing me back every time. I believe you've been acquainted with Larsen before."_

"Sadly, yes," Shepard nodded. "He's the very reason why I can't go back to Earth, thanks to his attempt to string me up during his farce of an investigation after the war, the prick."

Raynor Larsen was one of the old guard within the Senate. Even though Larsen was in his early nineties, he still maintained the physicality and spryness of a fifty-year old in terrific shape. He was a broad and impressive specimen of a man. His hair was black and slicked back, and he had an immaculately trim and proper goatee the color of night. His eyes were steel-blue and they radiated coldness across his craggy face. He was a charming and charismatic individual when he needed to be, but Shepard could easily see that face turn cruel, to be lined with anger.

He had been a firsthand witness to _that_ side of Larsen years ago.

Mere weeks after the war had ended, Shepard had unexpectedly received a subpoena that urged him to arrive at the temporary Senate location over in Florence. Shepard was still bedridden at the time, but with the assistance of a wheelchair, he had made do with complying with the terms of the subpoena only to find out that he was to be the star witness of an intrusive and altogether sudden inquisition. Larsen had been the executor and the mastermind behind this particular investigation and he had immediately embarked to ply the wheelchair-ridden Shepard with a series of uncomfortable questions relating to his specific actions during the Reaper War in addition to probing Shepard for his opinion regarding the level of cooperation and transparency he had received from the other races when he had been courting for their military support. The more Larsen questioned Shepard, the worse Shepard felt – he could clearly recall that it felt like a maw had been opening up in the pit of his stomach around that time. There had been an agenda behind this line of questioning, Shepard mused, but he could not pinpoint where all of this was leading to.

It was just that some of these questions were borderline outlandish, not to mention worrying. Larsen had specifically asked Shepard if at all he had received any offers from the salarian dalatrass that placed their military support on the table in exchange for betraying the krogan. Another question was for Shepard to confirm if the asari had deliberately withheld any military secrets that could have benefited the Alliance during the war.

The questions were vague to everyone else, but they had cut Shepard to the bone because he knew exactly to what Larsen was referring to. It shocked him that Larsen knew of some of these arrangements in the first place. Who had Larsen been talking to? Where did he get his information from?

As the public interrogation had continued, Shepard, becoming more and more uneasy, started to be less forthcoming with his answers, to the visible frustration of Larsen. All of this was merely serving to anger Shepard. He had practically saved the galaxy damn near single-handedly, he was no longer an officer in the Alliance (having resigned just a week prior), and on top of that, he would have rather been anywhere than in this cold room filled with people levelling accusations at him for the purpose of fueling a speculative witch-hunt. He just wanted to go home with his wife and lie in bed for the rest of the day. Who said he had to sit here and take this crap?

So, before Shepard had lost his sanity, in what was considered a controversial moment, multiple cameras had captured Shepard as he abruptly wheeled himself out of the room right as Larsen was in the middle of demanding that Shepard answer his questions. Shepard had finally snapped and disassociated his mind from this sham, no longer caring what consequences would arise from this move.

The next day Shepard left with Tali for Rannoch.

The day after that, a warrant was issued for Shepard. The official explanation was for contempt. The terms of the subpoena had been broken – Shepard had left in the middle of an official investigation. It had Larsen's fingerprints all over it. Naturally this had caused quite a bit of a stir amongst the galactic community. After all, the Alliance issuing a warrant against what had to be its biggest hero? It seemed hard to believe. But Larsen would not rescind his demand that Shepard comply with the warrant. He wanted his testimony, but by god, Shepard could not figure out why his specific word was so important to Larsen.

At least the Alliance had no jurisdiction on foreign worlds, which was why Shepard continued to linger upon Rannoch. Here, he had practically gone off the grid in an effort to escape the eternal politicking of those who constantly desired to attain more power that they could hold. Remaining isolated like this was manageable if not occasionally frustrating. Shepard missed his friends but at least they could call anytime. He still made a genuine effort to keep in contact with his comrades over the years, so at least he was never completely alone.

That, and he still had Roahn.

" _You did walk out of an official Senate hearing_ ," Hackett sighed. " _What did you think was going to happen afterward?_ "

"Don't know. Nothing, I suppose. After all, in my experience, the usual procedure for politicians was to simply furrow their brow and say nothing. This time, I guess it finally caught up with me."

" _Well, Raynor Larsen has been head of the Judicial Intelligence Committee over in Berlin for a while now, and he's recently been making some moves that I would call troubling. The committee has been requesting certain documents that only seem to pertain to operations that you were a major part of. This has happened only because some documentation has recently had its classified status lifted. The committee has asked for transcripts, write-ups, classified materials, anything that they can get their hands on_."

Shepard frowned as he turned his chair. "I'm not much of an expert at this, but isn't there a very high chance that a mass request for documentation is a precursor to charges being made against someone? That just sounds like Larsen is building a case, in this situation."

" _My thoughts exactly, but despite being Defense Minister, I still can't get an official statement from Larsen as to what his intentions are. All I know for sure are the materials that they've asked for. They all have one common theme: you. So, even though it sounds completely ludicrous, my gut says that the Judicial Intelligence Committee—"_

"—Is most likely going to slap fresh charges on me very soon," Shepard finished with a withering look. "All because Larsen wants my testimony on record. That son of a bitch. What the hell could he possibly think to charge _me_ of?"

" _The timing is certainly suspect_ ," Hackett agreed, " _considering that you've already have a warrant in your name for contempt. I'm guessing that this charge is simply a pretext for something that I can't yet determine. But I can't imagine that Larsen is going to expect you to come out of hiding to confront the charges yourself. He knows just as well as you do that the Alliance has no jurisdiction on Rannoch_."

"And yet, he's going forward with this."

Hackett gave a worried nod. " _And yet, he's going forward. I'll be sure to keep digging. Find out what I happen to unearth. In the meantime, I wouldn't worry all that much. You're here and Larsen's several trillion lightyears away._ "

Shepard lifted his hands briefly before laying them back onto his thighs. "One thing that I've learned in all my years is that nothing ever goes the way you'd expect, so I'm not going to relax just y—"

A beep from Shepard's omni-tool cut him off mid-sentence and he involuntarily glanced at his wrist for a split second. It looked like he had received a message. And it was from…

Now alert, Shepard tapped upon his haptic interface and a three word message harshly blared into his face. All in capital letters.

 _WHERE ARE YOU?_

"Aw… shit," Shepard breathed as he now checked his calendar for confirmation. "Damn it, damn it, damn it! Don't tell me that was _today_. It better not be _today_ …"

Yet the event was portrayed right there in front of his face, much to his dismay. Shepard used every curse word that he knew of as a way to describe just how idiotic and careless he had been to forget that today was the day that Roahn was returning home from the academy.

If he had the time noted correctly, she had arrived in the capitol city about an hour ago.

Fuck.

"I'm sorry, Steven," Shepard blurted out as he abruptly stood, ignoring the crackles being emitted from his knees, "I totally forgot to do… something. I'll call you back later!"

" _Nothing wrong, I hope?_ " Worry lined Hackett's face.

"No… not just yet," Shepard muttered in despair.

Hackett just made a sage look, sensing that this was a matter that did not concern him. " _I'll leave you to it, then. And if I come up with a firmer idea as to what Larsen's up to, I'll make sure you know right away."_

"Appreciate it," Shepard said seconds before he grabbed his jacket and raced out the door.

Once outside, he bounded over to the wheeled transport he had imported over from Earth, a mud-stained Honda truck, and immediately gunned it once he had switched it on. Taking the vehicle as fast as he dared along the bumpy road, he hoped Roahn would forgive him for being so late.

* * *

Shepard found her about two miles out from the outskirts of the city. She was walking determinedly, raising dust clouds as she went. Shepard slowed the craft down and wheeled it to a stop to let her in, but she passed him by without so much as a second glass, her eyes angry behind her blue visor.

"Roahn," he called to her after the driver's window dropped, but she did not answer.

Sighing, Shepard yanked the truck about, now pointing it in the direction that he had just come from. He gave the accelerator a bit of juice and edged the large vehicle closer to where his daughter was walking.

"Roahn, honey, get in the vehicle."

Shepard saw Roahn's fists bunch themselves together and she sped up, trying her damnedest to not speak to him.

He leaned over further in her direction. "It's sixteen more miles until home, Roahn. Do you really want to walk the rest of the way?"

Finally she stopped dead in her tracks, dirt and dust staining her boots in a sandy cloud. But she still did not look at him.

" _Today_ ," she only said.

"What's that, honey?"

"Today," she firmly repeated. "I thought you knew that I was coming home today. I thought you would be at the port waiting for me. How? How could you forget?"

"I just forgot, Roahn," Shepard said lamely, clearly anguished at his daughter's stubbornness. Also, he was pained because Roahn was totally in the right. "I'm sorry. I thought I had it marked down for the right day but… I was wrong. I messed up. I can't say any more to that because it was completely my fault."

Shepard had apparently said the right words because now Roahn turned to look at him, still wearing an accusatory glance, her arms crossed over her chest. She gave an almost inaudible huff and Shepard nearly wilted.

"I think I'll walk, thanks."

Now Shepard started to find himself getting annoyed. "Don't be ridiculous, young lady," he cautioned as he pointed a finger. "It's going to take you hours to get back home."

"I've traveled longer distances before."

"For Christ's sake, Roahn, get in this stupid truck."

Shepard was no longer being contrite and was somewhat exasperated by Roahn refusing to budge on her stance. _Definitely got that from her mother_. Roahn gave Shepard a sideways glance, a little caught off guard by the sudden edge in his voice, as if steel had unexpectedly crept into it. Taking one final forlorn glance at the road along the cliff, Roahn sighed and eventually jumped into the seat next to Shepard, and he finally pulled away towards their home together.

It would be at least ten or so minutes until they reached the house, but neither of them spoke for a bit as the six-wheeled truck rumbled across the road. Shepard nervously chewed his lip as he took sideways glances at Roahn, trying to figure out what he could say to her to get her to open up a bit.

"So…" he tried, using a lighter tone, "…did you enjoy your year at the academy, Roahn?"

Roahn let the question sit in the air for a bit as she tried to determine if her father was genuinely interested in what she had been studying or if he was in more of a blasé mindset, trying to kickstart a conversation purely for conversation's sake.

"It was… fine," was all she said. Roahn intentionally did not elaborate, wanting to see if Shepard would press her for more information – a test of sorts to see if her father was indeed eager to know aspects of her life.

"Oh," Shepard just said, looking slightly crestfallen. "Okay."

Guess he failed that test, Roahn inwardly sighed.

A haze of awkwardness settled upon the two and did not let up until they arrived at their house. Once Shepard had let the vehicle roll to a stop, Roahn jumped out right at the next second, eager to be free from riding with her father.

Shepard unlocked the door after they had ascended the shale steps and Roahn jogged right in, scanning around the foyer for any changes made since the last time she had set eyes upon the place.

"Everything in your room is the same way you left it," she heard her father say behind her. "I… did a little bit of dusting before you came."

"Thanks," Roahn mumbled, but paid Shepard very little mind. As her father was hanging up his coat, Roahn headed straight for her room, leaving him by himself.

As soon as Roahn stepped into her room, the door automatically shut behind her. The very air seemed to still around her in the confined space and she took a much-needed breath of relief. Despite Roahn having enjoyed her time at the academy (only begrudgingly, seeing as enrolling was never her choice to begin with) she did miss the sort of privacy that naturally came with having an entire room to herself. She walked over to her bed, which was neatly made, and lied down on her back upon it with a grateful groan. She tested the mattress with her fingers – much comfier than her cot. Warm light from the afternoon sun pushed in past the translucent windows, casting blurry shadows upon the ground.

Roahn then sat up and looked around her room for a bit. She let her eyes across the shelves bolted onto the wall at the opposite end of the room, taking the time to look at each of her action figures that were still lovingly displayed in their poses, each one a representation of a famous war hero. She was only one figure away from completing the set… but she had set a staunch rule for herself to never buy the figurine of her father. She just saw no point in having to look at _that_ every day.

"A hero," Roahn grumbled to herself as she flopped back down. "Yeah, right."

She wondered if she was missing anything whenever her friends spoke about her father in awe. If he really was a hero, how come he didn't act like one? Her father was a quiet man, solemn and reserved, and very non-confrontational. Sure, she had a few good memories of him when she was younger, but after her mother died, her father had become severely withdrawn. He barely spoke to anyone, not even his own daughter. Perhaps that was why he had sent Roahn away to the academy – to get out of potentially talking to his family anymore.

Roahn just could not see the point of her father being so… distant. Did he not think that Roahn knew that he had been an important figure in the war? She had access to the extranet! It was not like she was living completely off the grid and out of touch with reality. Rannoch's information access was limited by its infrastructure, yes, but Roahn could still look up synopses of all the battles her father had taken place in. There was a list practically a mile long of his achievements. So many campaigns he had taken place in… one would think that he could at least talk about them.

Eden Prime. Ilos. The Citadel. Illium. Tuchanka. Rannoch. Thessia. Earth. Just looking up any one of those topics in relation to the word "Shepard" could have produced an entire laundry list of reading material. Roahn could not understand it. How was it that she knew so much about her father… and yet so very little all at the same time?

What was she not seeing?

All this yearning was filling her mind up with a dense cold, as if someone had poured chilled mercury into her skull. There were just too many gaps for Roahn to comprehend. Her father was Commander Shepard, the man who saved the galaxy.

All he was to her was simply just a man.

Was her father always like this? Well… no. The only times Roahn remembered him actually smiling was spent in the company of her mother, Tali. She had been the only person that could make him truly happy. When she died, a part of both Roahn and Shepard had died alongside her. Roahn had waited for Shepard to reach out to her, to fill the emptiness her mother left in her wake… but Shepard had retreated inward instead, never branching out to comfort his own daughter, content to merely wallow in his own sorrow instead of paying mind to the feelings of those around him.

Roahn figured that it was around that time that she had begun to somewhat resent her father.

She wanted to love him. In a way, she still did, but it was a loose love, bound only by the vague ties of family. Roahn just wanted him to reach out to her, to try and make her understand his reasoning for being so stubborn, so withdrawn.

If only they could just be honest, together. To simply talk. Roahn had never met her heroes in real life. She desperately wanted her father to be one of those heroes.

"I just don't understand you," Roahn whispered as she continued to stare up at her bare ceiling,

A knock at the door caused Roahn to suddenly jump. She sat up on her bed, eyeing the doorway. It did not open, as ostensibly the person on the other side was waiting for Roahn to give her permission to enter. However, she simply kept silent.

After ten seconds of waiting, the door finally opened and Shepard poked his head inside, immediately locking eyes with his daughter. He caught her expectant gaze and briefly looked at the ground, as if he was afraid of what he might find in Roahn's stare.

"I… made you something to eat," he uttered quietly. He looked like he had more to say, but Shepard soon gave up and ducked out, leaving Roahn alone once again.

Roahn was smart enough to determine that she should not pass up this chance for food, especially since she was hungry right about now. Which was why, two minutes later, she found herself seated at the table in the kitchen, across from her father, eyeing her heated food tube in astonishment.

"Cipritine Heron-Egg," Roahn read the label aloud, eyes wide.

Shepard had a plate of reheated food in front of him that looked rather unappetizing to Roahn. Aside from his meal being of levo chirality, which was poisonous to her, his portion had too many vegetables.

Looking up from his plate, Shepard nodded to the tube that he had given his daughter. "I trust that was the flavor you liked the most, yes?"

Roahn was impressed that he knew that much. More than that, this particular version was a gourmet edition, with a better consistency and additional spices added for flavor. More expensive as well, but she knew that her father could afford it.

Wordlessly, Roahn nodded. Satisfied, Shepard resumed tucking into his dinner as he took meticulous bites. Roahn extended the induction port from the food tube and inserted the end into a slot just below her vocabulator so that she could actually eat. The entire system was designed so that, even while eating, quarians would not have to worry about exposing themselves to the open air, allowing them to sustain themselves with a certain peace of mind.

As they ate, Roahn found herself stealing quick glances at her father, painfully noting that he was able to eat his food without a helmet in the way. Inwardly, she felt a pang, but she swallowed it back down with an agonized gulp. After all, Shepard was not intentionally being spiteful by demonstrating that he had more intrinsic freedoms as a human – he was simply adhering to the natural customs that he had been following all his life. Nothing cruel about it at all.

Yet… Roahn still felt perturbed at this lack of observance. It was odd enough that her father did not apply himself to quarian doctrine with his cavalier approach to taking in life without a suit, or that he did not deliberately adhere to any dietary restrictions so that he could be more sympathetic to what his own daughter had to go through so that she could eat. The disparity between the two of them was massive… but she knew that her father could drastically lessen that gap of his own accord.

"So…" Shepard said unexpectedly without looking up from his dinner. "The academy. It must've been fun for you. Did you enjoy any of the subjects there?"

Roahn could have leapt up and cheered for Shepard actually bothering to delve out a personal question with some request for detail. Instead, she kept her reactions muted and cleared her throat before answering.

"I… actually, yes. Yes, I did. My mentors taught all sorts of good subjects. Oh! My favorite was engineering applications. You see, I had to do this project—"

Roahn cut herself off before she could ramble any further, certain that her father would not find any of this to be interesting. But, to her surprise, Shepard looked up from his meal and set his utensils down on his plate, using his free hands to support his head as he now looked at her expectantly.

"What sort of project, honey?" he asked.

How about that. Maybe he _could_ change.

Roahn licked her lips, suddenly nervous to be subjugated to her father's gaze. Now _this_ was a new feeling. "Well… I did an assignment where I made a theoretical blueprint of a device that could potentially analyze geologic areas to either improve or construct new dams for us to use here. You know, just something that might be a benefit to us in the future."

A smile flitted across Shepard's face. "The engineering of waterways. Sounds like that topic required a lot of research."

"It did, but it was actually pretty easy. I just had to know what I was looking for beforehand. Plus, I found a site on the extranet that is like a literal encyclopedia of any topic you can think of. I got a lot of information that way – I just had to cite my sources that were provided at the bottom of the page."

Her father now chuckled. "You are definitely your mother's child. Love of engineering, a ravenous hunger for knowledge. You're hers, no doubt about it."

Shepard then looked somewhat lost and Roahn's own expression started slipping away as well. She had rarely heard her father talk openly about her mother to her. This was the furthest he had got in front of Roahn in two years. Bringing up the subject seemed to cause an unbearable pain to be upon him, as he would always grow quiet and mentally withdraw himself from any conversation, without fail.

She might have been able to tolerate this sort of behavior from her father if she had no prior memories of more pleasant discussions when her mother was still alive.

" _Did my little Ro have a good day today?_ " Tali would always ask her at dinner. Of course Roahn would always say "yes" to the delight of her mother.

Roahn had absolutely no negative connotations regarding her mother. Tali was always there to coddle her with love and affection, always on hand to talk about whatever topic was on Roahn's mind. Although, she too was less forthcoming regarding her own participation during the war. Whenever Roahn asked Tali how she was a part of the entire thing, she would always say, " _I was an engineer, Ro. I worked with your father on his ship from the very beginning until the very end._ "

Even for Tali, Roahn knew that explanation had been deliberately vague.

Regardless, when Tali had been around, conversation around the dinner table had been a livelier event. Even if Roahn did not completely understand the topics that her parents had been discussing, she could still remember her father smiling as he talked to Tali, his delighted expression clear as day.

He didn't smile so much anymore.

Shepard then ruffled himself a bit, striking Roahn from her reverie. "I heard they took you guys on trips around the planet to work on special projects. That must have been exciting for you. Were there any other special classes that they had you do?"

"Aside from our usual term," Roahn said, "not very much."

Now Shepard's eyes narrowed slightly. "They didn't teach you how to handle firearms, did they?"

Her father hated guns. Roahn had never seen him carry one in the house. All of her friends' parents had at least one rifle in their homes, but she found it strange that Shepard never seemed interested in having one around.

Yet another reason why Roahn was nonplussed at how Shepard was considered to be a hero. What kind of a war hero despises guns?

"No," Roahn admitted, although she thought she didn't sound too convincing. "Nothing like that, dad."

Shepard tilted his head slightly before giving a grunt and returning to his meal. "Good. Children like you should not have to be exposed to things like that at your age."

Roahn's face grew hot. She knew he was being a hypocrite. Why, Shepard had probably held a pistol when he was younger than she was! What did he know about her not being ready for that responsibility?!

"I'm going to need your help around the house later this week," Shepard continued after a few minutes had passed of solemn silence, oblivious to his daughter's incredulity. "And I think it'll do you some good to have work to keep you occupied. We're going to have to clean the outside windows – they're getting caked with dirt – and we need to give the air scrubbers a good dousing. Also, you'll be taking care of your mother's herb garden from now on. The plants will need their daily dose of water and vitamins from you. And after you're done with those—"

Roahn couldn't believe her ears. As if things weren't uncomfortable enough, now she had chores to contend with. Chores! And her father had been doling them out as mildly as if he was discussing the weather. It was like he did not realize that Roahn had a life of her own and that she did not want to spend every waking hour of the day working on the stupid house!

Coldly, Roahn set her empty food tube down on the table, creating a hollow ring. Shepard looked up and stopped talking, somewhat surprised.

"I'm tired," Roahn said distantly. "I'm going to go to my room to sleep now."

Shepard balked for a brief moment. "Oh. Okay. We can finish this in the morning. Well, have a good night, Roa—"

But Roahn had bolted out of the kitchen before Shepard could complete his sentence.

Now alone at the table, letting the sudden emptiness crush him, Shepard slouched against his chair and scratched at his beard tiredly. He now had the rest of the night to wonder to himself how differently this day could have gone if he had not screwed things up this morning.

Or had he been screwing things up for far longer?

"You were always better at this than I was, Tali," Shepard grumbled himself as he collected the dishes to rinse them off in the sink.

* * *

 **A/N: So far I've been able to maintain a steady pace with writing _Cenotaph_. Chapter releases are not going to be weekly, mind you, but unless I get run over by a wayward Prius, there should not be anything remotely close to month-long gaps in terms of _Cenotaph's_ schedule (the key word is "should"). Hopefully everyone's been enjoying the story so far (or at least are intrigued by it).**

 **In previous stories I've provided a playlist at the bottom of each chapter comprising of a mix of soundtrack cues that have either inspired me while writing or are simply pieces that I think would accompany reading the specified chapters quite well. Since no one's told me to shove these playlists up my ass so far, they're going to be in every chapter from now on.**

 **Playlist:**

 **Tali's Obelisk: "A Cabin on the Lake" by Jed Kurzel from the film _Alien: Covenant_**

 **Roahn/The Road: "Better Days" by Lorne Balfe from the film _Terminator: Genisys_**


	3. Chapter 3: Peer Pressure

" _Mr. Koenig, let us change topics for a second. I want to ask about the hiring practices that Chimera utilizes – using the Herald document as our reference, in this case. We have gone over the policies that the extranet site for your company has specifically outlined and we would like to know why Chimera seems to lack adherence to basic hiring templates from your peers. Self-discrimination forms are a mandatory inclusion, you are aware? But can you help explain to us why Chimera has a specific instance in hiring veterans that are only human?"  
_ Sen. Dolezal, UNAS

" _I… uh… Senator, I don't know where it is on our site that you've been looking, but I can assure you that we have a very open policy regarding any applicants that might wish to join our organization. Our collection of applicants being mostly human is coincidental, plain and simple. Rest assured, our policies are completely up to date with governmental standards, including the option to perform drug testing on certain subjects."  
_ Erich Koenig, CEO – Chimera

" _Mr. Koenig, did I ask you at all about drug testing?"  
_ Sen. Dolezal, UNAS

* * *

 _Hourglass Nebula – Deep Space_

Lieutenant Vorok Uzed was restless. More so than normal, at least.

A jumpy salarian was quite a sight to see, even if other races could not pick up on the subtle tics that indicated that Uzed was in a conflicted state of mind. But all the signs were there, as evident by his rapid pacing back and forth across the windowed upper deck, the red and green rings of the nearby nebula casting foreign hues across his mottled brown skin. The membranes in Uzed's eyelids were also blinking upward more than normal, desperate to disperse moisture across his large eyes.

Uzed shuddered. He felt too dry. The air filtration system on this ship must be going on the fritz. It was way too arid here, at least on this deck, for a salarian to remain comfortable.

This agitation was a new sensation for Uzed. This pounding of the heart, the twitching of the fingers, dryness of the eyes. Uzed wanted to make a vocal declaration that he was not at all happy, but since that would not have done anyone any good, he remained silent for now. These moments of aggravation would have been manageable for Uzed if these feelings did not crop up whenever he was off duty, but it was always when his shift was up did he get to be this way. Twitchy and spiteful. How he missed work.

After his one allotted hour of sleep – a normal amount of time for a salarian - Uzed would have another half hour to tend to himself before he started his work for the day, giving him the opportunity to eat, groom, or anything else that fell within reason on board the ship.

Unfortunately for salarians, or at least Uzed, boredom could set within minutes of having nothing to do.

Which is what Uzed was suffering from right now.

Salarians kept to a strict regimen regarding their allocated time slots for when they could start or end their work at their stations, and Uzed still had twenty more minutes to go before he could finally set down and work at blissfully crunching numbers and data. Just the thought of being exposed to all that data and plugging his brain into his console made Uzed's limbs electric with anticipation. Such eagerness for activity was natural for a species with a lifespan of only 40 or so years, and that was _with_ cybernetic enhancements prolonging their lives.

The curse of a hyperactive metabolism. Time passed so much faster for salarians than any other species. On one hand, this allowed them to focus more on duties that were of utmost importance but it also meant that salarians left very little time for leisure.

Even though he had a tremendous memory, Uzed could not remember if he had ever taken a break from his assignments _for_ leisure in his entire life. Hell, he probably would not know what to do with himself if he had more than three hours of free time.

As one of the crew of the _Perdu_ , one of the Union's trademark stealth frigates, Uzed's responsibilities ran the gamut from analyzing planetary scans to detecting anomalies in the area. The data was all dependent on outside factors, always varied – Uzed loved the unpredictability. The _Perdu's_ crew was its own little microcosm, a representation of society confined to a vacuum. The frigate itself carried its own little idiosyncrasies that the salarians on board shared between them – subtle shifts in emotion that tipped the emotional scale from one side to the other, but never to the point where the metaphorical scale was in danger of tipping completely over.

Uzed was STG, the special intelligence wing of the salarian military. Only stealth frigates were allocated to STG work, which precluded the _Perdu's_ posting way out in the Hourglass Nebula, seemingly far away from any civilized society imaginable. The _Perdu's_ captain had his orders: to patrol the nearby sectors in the usual manner – silent – and report back to Sur'Kesh on any anomalies at indicated transmission points. Routine work for Uzed and the rest of the crew, but there was always the tiny thrill that Uzed received, knowing that his analytical work was all part of STG's spycraft efforts.

An unofficial mantra that members of STG held was that it was always prudent to never trust anyone, even your allies.

The efforts of STG were frowned upon by most Council races, Uzed knew, but none of them raised any stink about such matters. After all, it was an open secret that similar tradecraft measures were being used amongst other races against their own allies too. All the races were inherently distrustful of everyone anyway, but it was the salarians that had popularized and had perfected the art of deceit.

Whatever the case, Uzed was proud that his work in STG could potentially save the lives of billions through the _Perdu's_ continual monitoring efforts. He was proud that the data he was scrubbing could eventually prove to give the salarian military an edge should an upcoming conflict rear its head. He was proud—

Wait, was that tapping?

Uzed wheeled his head around, his slit eyes frantically scanning the array of stars and clouds of gas through the thickened window as he saw nothing but the window of the upper deck. Waves of ultraviolet radiation wafted in his vision, spat from clusters of nearby stars, interfering with his field of view. Immediately, Uzed stilled himself – no easy task – and fought to control his breathing, certain that he had heard something out of the ordinary.

And… yes! There was a light tapping noise… coming from…

It took a lot to throw Uzed off these days, but nevertheless, Uzed was thrown as saw a brief outline of something _outside_ the ship. He was dumbstruck as he realized he was looking at a humanoid form that did not at all look like a salarian. He would have tried to wrack his brain if there had been an EVA scheduled for today, but since this person who was latched to the ship was not a salarian, Uzed knew that could only mean one thing.

 _Intruder_.

Uzed barely had time to process the wide array of glowing yellow optics, and a matte gray and blue paint scheme, because that was not the most disconcerting thing about this person that captivated Uzed's attention.

It was that this person was _waving_ to Uzed.

Five fingers. Metal glinting in the bare sunlight. Completely soundless in the void.

Had they not been helmeted, Uzed would have been easily able to imagine a cruel smile on this person's face.

But… was that even a helmet?

A dozen thoughts sheared through Uzed's mind. Was this some sort of a sick joke? What matter of craziness would drive a person to latch onto the _Perdu_ for the ulterior motive of simply messing about with the first sap that could lay eyes on him? For that matter, how did this person even _find_ the _Perdu?_ Stealth systems should be running silent! Uzed knew that there was no way an ordinary person could have located this frigate so far out in deep space.

An _ordinary_ person…

Uzed opened his mouth, his omni-tool already activated, to call for an alarm, but the waving figure outside the ship suddenly mimed a snapping motion with his fingers. An orange flash erupted near the canopy windows, right in the middle, and Uzed threw up an arm to protect his eyes from the glare. The explosion rippled through the observation deck, deafening the salarian, and caused his skin to blister.

Uzed tried to scream, but the air was forcibly ripped from his lungs, peeling the skin from his throat and causing a mass of blood and organs to exit through Uzed's mouth in a flash. He felt an invisible hand start to tug him out of the ship, right through the hole the detonator had caused in the window. Uzed's feet left the floor and the salarian splayed his limbs out desperately, trying to find purchase, but it was too late.

He had never even figured out who had been waving to him.

As Uzed shot past the jagged remains of the window, his body brushed a little too close to where some of the remaining glassy shards were still anchored into the frame. Uzed felt a sharp pain, a fire in his belly, and he had a brief glimpse of a thick, greenish mass exiting from near his body. That was when Uzed realized that the glass had completely cut him open. He had been disemboweled.

The infinite cold of space thankfully took him in moments, allowing Uzed only a singular second to process the intense pain, before ice crystals immediately formed around his eyes and skin, causing his blood to stop in his veins in seconds.

The frozen corpse of Uzed sailed into the black, never to be found again.

* * *

Heavy thuds reverberated through the deck of the _Perdu_ as a pair of metal legs stomped down, anchoring themselves to the floor from powerful magnets embedded into the soles. Additional clomps followed the initial entrant into the salarian vessel, as red and black armored troopers furrowed in through the breached viewport, careful not to slice their bodysuits open on the jagged transparisteel.

They had already seen the effects of what scraping too close to the damaged portholes would do to a person.

The troopers all carried specialized Valkyrie rifles – powerful two-burst assault weapons colored in an urban pattern of jagged grays and blacks. The troopers swept the area with their weapons, with tiny thin lasers harmlessly beaming through the air – confirmation that the observation deck was uninhabited for now.

The breached viewport finally engaged its emergency shutters, causing the frigate to begin to normalize the pressure that it had lost from the incursion. One of the engineers in the boarding party disengaged their omni-tool, having already slaved the frigate's systems into their own subroutines.

The individual at the head of the breaching force stepped forward. At a shade over two meters tall, this person was quite the sight to behold, easily standing above his subordinates. Unlike everyone else, this man wore no bodysuit, but was covered head to toe in a matte gray metal armor that adhered to a humanoid form in segments that could easily shift around. It was not exactly armor, per se, but more of an extension of an entire _chassis_. Shiny fingers clicked and whirred in the silent upper deck and an automated wheeze from air vents upon the collar of the enormous metal monster indicated that whatever was inside was alive… but not entirely human either.

The cyborg carefully tilted his head around the room, as if listening for any disturbances from the rest of the crew. His head was smooth and elongated, a pair of vents near where his "jaw" would be to give voice to his words. Two cruel, red-orange slits represented the cyborg's eyes, with six smaller optics arrayed in a sequence below – eight total oculi glowing upon the machine's face. Between the optics, the central plate of the cyborg's face was slightly translucent, exposing a hint of wiring, a shiny metallic cover, and a flash of bloody flesh beneath.

The cyborg rolled his enormous shoulders, straightening his broad frame up a few inches. He then silently held his hand out, an unsaid signal for a trooper to step forward and to sling a weapon almost a meter long off his own back for his commander to take. The cyborg hefted the long barrel with ease and grasped an enormous drum filled to the brim with thermal clips before slotting it into the underside of the weapon. Then the cyborg took a long length of tubing and connected one end into the gigantic gun and the other into a port upon his chest. The tubing then glowed a bright blue and the cyborg racked a clip into the mechanism with a quick two-stroke motion.

With his custom weapon assembled, the cyborg easily held it one-handed as he made a subtle gesture for the troopers behind him to form up single-file. The cyborg then made a mere gesture towards the door that led deeper into the frigate, an over-the-air command interfacing with the door and causing it to open at a whim, revealing a very surprised-looking salarian on the other side, ostensibly a guard coming to check out the commotion that had just ensued up here less than a minute ago.

The cyborg's weapon boomed, barely jerking him back an inch, and the salarian's head vanished in a blast of green viscera.

Single shot. No need to be wasteful.

None of the boarding party seemed to be particularly concerned that they had just ruined their stealth advantage. They all then proceeded down the nearby stairwell, over the headless body of the salarian their leader had just blown away, and down to the main deck.

Here, a cadre of salarians were running about, trying to make sense of the noises that were being reported all throughout the frigate. Panic and confusion were already settling in. Salarians were used to always having the upper hand, but when their natural desire for caution had failed them, they typically struggled to hone in on a new strategy. It was like they had never considered the scenario in which _they_ would be boarded in a hostile takeover.

That sort of disorganized chaos was what the cyborg took advantage of when he waded into a large crowd of the aliens in the midst of a packed hallway. Immediately, the cyborg fired his weapon, sending an automatic spray of shotgun rounds ricocheting off the narrow walls of the corridor. Light and noise filled the air in addition to the spattered spray of blood as the hapless salarians were practically disintegrated under the punishing onslaught. Light strobed in the dim corridor, and the noise from the firing weapon burst the eardrums of anyone who was not wearing a helmet, thanks to the punishing audible waves pulsating off the walls.

It only took five seconds for twelve salarians to be killed.

The cyborg let his finger off the trigger only once no more enemies were in sight. The recoil of his gun, despite it being particularly massive, had been negligible thanks to the cyborg's metal limbs and joints being easily able to absorb the bone-shattering blowback. The gun's heat dispersal system was also not a problem – in addition to the enormous amount of heat being stored by the gun's thermal clips, the tubing that connected the gun to the cyborg was a secondary heat bleed-off function that sent any heat to be dispersed directly by the cyborg's chassis.

Under the right circumstances, the cyborg could fire such a weapon for several minutes without even having to reload.

The troopers behind the cyborg kept their weapons aimed downward; so far they had not needed to fire at all. Not in such cramped conditions. Their commander was taking care of things handedly. If any of the salarians did manage to get a shot off, it would just ricochet off the cyborg's thick armor-plated chassis.

Besides, if the commander needed any help, all he would have to do was say the word.

The wanton slaughter continued for a couple more minutes with the cyborg going from deck to deck, clearing room after room. The troopers behind him mopped up any stragglers or if any salarians tried to flank them. The intruders stepped over a multitude of bodies in various states of dismemberment, all caused by the razor-like flechette rounds that the cyborg's gun exuded. Blood and gore stained the deck, acid-green, raising a stink.

In short order, the frigate was claimed. But there was still one room left on the command deck that the party had not covered yet, the door that they were standing in front of right now. It was locked, of course, but one of the engineers rapidly went to work on the security firewalls and had it open in less than ten seconds.

The cyborg swiftly strode into the room, which was a large cavernous space where a long platform stood suspended within the entire expanse. The walls were coated with a reflective material reminiscent of silicon, and there was a humming noise that seemed to emit from all around. At the end of the suspended platform, a lone salarian stood defiantly, but weaponless, his face unreadable as he watched the cyborg approach him.

The mechanical man had slung his customized shotgun over his back at this point and all eight of his optics were firmly fixated upon the salarian, noting the alien's insignia upon the collar of his body armor – a captain. He strode past the salarian, designating him to not be a threat, and flexed a fist over a sleek terminal, causing a holographic screen several meters long to appear out of thin air, displaying an almost incomprehensible feed of infinite lists of data and projections, all denoted by meaningless acronyms and foreign shorthand. Unreadable to anyone in the room, human or salarian. Regardless, the data all seemed to funnel directly towards the cyborg's fist, which was now open, as if all of the singular pieces of valuable information was collecting in his open palm, like rainwater falling from the sky. A complete server wipe, no longer to be used by the salarians.

Seconds later, the large holo-screen darkened, but streams of orange data flurried around the cyborg's fist in rippling trails. The cyborg flexed his fingers in admiration, finding the visualization of the information he had just copied to have a certain beauty to it.

The salarian captain, having witnessed this play out right in front of him, had a sour look on his face. Clearly, he was fuming at being beaten and also from being so carelessly disregarded. His mouth was in a pursed line and his eyes were furrowed in a helpless anger.

"You infiltrated our firewalls," he accused the cyborg, quivering in fury. "An impossibility. No one has ever been able to detect our frigates running silent, much less penetrate our security."

Now the cyborg shifted, tiny clinking noises emitting from his chest plates.

"Impossibility?" a strange voice uttered from the cyborg – like two different pitches, both low and breathy, were speaking at the same time. The machine turned to look at the salarian, head tilted in a quizzical expression. "Or perhaps you're simply refusing to accept that you've been beaten at your own game? Remain stagnant for long enough and eventually progress will overtake you, salarian."

The captain gave a tired smile. "Curious how you would associate yourself to a certain species, considering what you are now. More synthetic than organic in your case. Not much left to associate you with humanity. Chimera has certainly gotten bolder as of late."

The cyborg did not betray so much as a hint of a reaction, but the salarian swept his gaze about, making certain to look upon the red and black armored escort that stood near the doorway.

"Oh yes," the captain continued, "I am well aware of who you associate with. Chimera has always been a blunt tool rather than a precise instrument. Espionage was never their specialty. But this is bold, even for the company. So if I were to hazard a guess, considering your… unusual presence on board my ship, that would make you… the Legionnaire? Chimera's elite commander?"

The cyborg bristled stiffly, but seemed to maintain an air of arrogance. "Very good, captain. You are certainly the kind of caliber to be granted your own command, with that insight."

"I have no use for your compliments. Especially not from the… _thing_ who stormed my vessel and murdered my crew. "

"How succinct," the Legionnaire mocked, the plates near his shoulders shifting ever so slightly. "What is your name, captain?"

"Kirrahe," the salarian offered immediately.

The Legionnaire let a quiet electronic warble escape from the twin vocabulators at his neck. "Too young to be the old man," he wheezed, stifling in a ragged cough. "The _son_ , perchance?"

"I am of the second clutch of Admiral Kirrahe, correct," the captain lifted his head in defiance. "My lineage is not the issue here. What is the issue is why you are here in the first place?"

The orange optics of the Legionnaire briefly trailed upward, his ten metallic fingers flexing from end to end before quickly bunching into fists. Deep rumbles echoed from the cyborg's chassis and the salarian felt a twinge of fear as the Legionnaire loomed over him.

"I warn you, salarian, do not play stupid with me."

"There is nothing to hide here, Legionnaire. You don't need me to confirm what you probably already know, seeing as you would not be here if you had no idea what you were looking for. But would it be inappropriate to humor me, at least, so that I can have the knowledge that my men did not die for nothing?"

"That is certainly doable," the Legionnaire hissed. "For someone of your stature, to keep you in the dark would indeed be a shame. As to what we want out of you and this ship, it is the cargo that you have in these very holds that are of interest to us. One of which is in our custody, the databanks, as you just saw, but we know that the second item is protected in the cargo hold by a biometric security lock – your heartbeat, in particular. The very reason why you remain alive should have been an immediate giveaway that we knew of the object that we seek down below. Your comrades were disposable while you… still have some use in you."

"You're expecting me to cooperate, then?" Kirrahe said automatically, trying to find some humor from his defiance. "You're not anticipating any difficulties from that, are you?"

But the Legionnaire rumbled an ugly laugh. "I thought you might say something to that effect. But, try not to take me for a fool, salarian. You are just the quickest route to my eventual destination. There are many contingencies that I have to rip your spoils out from the dying heart of this ship… all more violent than the solution that I have just presented to you now."

"Who told you that the _Perdu_ had what you seek now?" Kirrahe was curious. "A leak? A mole in STG?"

"Nothing so complex. There are other ways to a solution that do not revolve around espionage and trickery, salarian. Actually, the proof that I had was all thanks… to _you_. I have several logs worth of encrypted messages that you sent to the frigate _Ixzima_ , logs that give a rather detailed manifest regarding the item you currently have in your hold right as we speak. Perhaps I'm looking at our mole right now?"

Kirrahe gave a start. "There is no way that you could have located the _Ixzima_! Even _I_ don't know its exact location!

"Yet, apparently, I did. Yours isn't the first frigate I've boarded before, shall we say. But that is irrelevant. I have the proof and your fellow captain did a poor job of safekeeping his own cargo before he died in an ignominious fashion. I hope you can understand if I would like your particular scenario to proceed in a more… simpler fashion?"

"What if I refuse to help you? All I have to do is make you kill me and you'll be locked out of getting what you want for good."

The Legionnaire then took a step forward and leaned over, forcing Kirrahe to bend slightly backward as the cyborg towered over him. If the Legionnaire had been flesh instead of metal, Kirrahe knew that he would be able to feel his foe's hot breath from this distance.

"You'd only be entertaining a futile decision," the Legionnaire's eerie voice intoned. "I understand your loyalty to your cause, salarian. Rest assured, I sympathize. I have my own cause to pursue and it's for a privilege that reflects an uncomplicated allowance. But you should know that I'll be able to obtain what I am after, with or without your direct help. All you'd be doing with your refusal is inconvenience me for a few days. The data on your ship – it's all mine. Not to mention the entirety of the ship itself belongs to me now. Do you really think that your death will stop me completely, just because your heartbeat is linked to a simple biometric lock? If that's the route you choose, then I'll have no choice but to resort to more painful measures. But if you wish to cooperate…"

The Legionnaire turned his palm upward as he cocked his head, mimicking a grim sort of pleasure. He let the remainder of the sentence linger in the air, knowing that the entirety of his message had been delivered in full.

Kirrahe bristled, keeping his expression neutral, despite the fact that internally, he was broiling with fear and regret. Eventually, his organic disposition to avoid pain for as much as possible won out and his shoulders loosened, causing the alien to wilt in front of the cyborg – a universal expression of defeat.

"Smart man," the Legionnaire hissed triumphantly and he clapped the thin alien on the shoulder hard, causing Kirrahe to stagger, before gesturing to the hall outside the room. "Now… shall we?"

A human captain probably would have put on a more stubborn performance, but Kirrahe was a proud man and he knew when he had been dealt a crummy hand. Instead of grumbling and making a show of things, Kirrahe kept his head held high as he strode out of the frigate's data center, with the Legionnaire close behind. A quick trip down a nearby lift followed by a few more minutes of walking through a modestly sized hangar bay gave way to a large door about the size of a Mako tank, an utterly impassible face.

The scanners to the door were placed just above it. All Kirrahe had to do was step forward and invisible beams would scan his biometric signature automatically. The entire process was well-oiled and faultless, with very little delay.

With an uncharacteristic hiss of servos, the large bay door began to drop downward, running entirely silent on its magnetic rails. The Legionnaire watched this all play out, his face impassive, and his hands folded behind his back. Once the door had finally descended into the floor, the cyborg then strode past Kirrahe and into the hold, making a beeline for the lone object inside it.

It was a bulbous item, round and polished to a dark sheen, and came up to the Legionnaire's "chest." The Legionnaire carefully walked around the large object, inspecting it carefully for any defects or faults. Finding none, the cyborg placed a finger on a faded red and white insignia placed near the top of the item and rubbed a finger along it thoughtfully, tracing the foreign brush strokes.

"An unfortunate item for the turians to misplace," the Legionnaire said. "Normally this would be something they would have been keeping tabs on but… thanks to the chaos of the last war, they probably never knew they lost it to begin with. And… just as expected… the insignia here. From the Menae foundry. Tricky salarians. I don't suppose you were going to return this to the turians out of the goodness of your heart?"

Kirrahe seemed offended by the insinuation. "It was merely our prerogative to retrieve this before unsavory parties like you could get their hands on—"

The Legionnaire's hand splayed out in the blink of an eye and electromagnets in his palm called the heavily modified pistol at his holster to his hand. The cyborg caught the black and boxy weapon in a smooth and practiced maneuver and he had it up and aimed in less than a second.

The gun coughed.

Kirrahe jolted and a bright burst of greenish blood exploded from his head. The salarian collapsed on the ground in a heap, a dark puddle beginning to spread from his body. The Chimera troops looked amongst themselves for a bit before edging around the body, suddenly a little self-conscious in response to the casual violence.

"Prerogative, indeed," the Legionnaire spoke to the corpse as he moved away from the item in the cargo hold. Looking amongst the troopers, he made a series of quick gestures to gain their attention. "Load our capture into the ship and chart a course for this frigate to pay a visit to the nearest star. No evidence left behind."

The troopers did not need to be told twice. They immediately began setting to work at hefting the enormous device as the Legionnaire walked back to the observation deck alone, leaving his subordinates to do their jobs.

If the Legionnaire had any control over his lungs, he would have taken a large breath to revel in the moment.

The cyborg then lifted his enormous arm and quickly made a connection to the nearest comm buoy. His transmission was accepted immediately and the Legionnaire was quickly greeted by a blank screen with a series of meaningless white numbers being displayed upon the bottom right corner.

" _Identification_ ," a flat, robotic voice intoned.

"5907-14-33 Hotel Lima," the Legionnaire spoke into his omni-tool. The call directory processed his words before humming for a five second period. At the end of the rerouting process, a shadowy outline filtered into view of the miniature screen that the Legionnaire held in his palm. A proxy. Just another layer of the hierarchy that the cyborg had to be exposed to, yet this was his only form of communication with his superiors. He just had to roll with it, despite the fact that he hated dictating himself to a glorified messenger.

" _We will proceed with confirmation dictation,_ " the proxy asked on the other end, sounding vaguely bored.

"I acknowledge," the Legionnaire spoke clearly.

" _Ineluctable modality of the visible."_

"At least that if no more, thought through my eyes."

" _Signatures of all things I am here to read_."

"Seaspawn and seawrack, the nearing tide, that rusty boot."

" _Snotgreen, bluesilver, rust_."

"Colored signs. Limits of the diaphane."

" _But he adds?_ "

"In bodies. Then he was aware of them bodies before of them colored."

" _How?_ "

"By knocking his sconce against them."

" _If you can put your five fingers through it, it is a gate, if not a door_."

"Shut your eyes and see."

The proxy gave a _humph_ and there was the nearly inaudible sound of the shadowed man on the other end shifting in his seat. " _End dictation. Please provide status, Legionnaire_."

The Legionnaire found this organic need to have passages memorized from some obscure bit of fiction to be a remarkably maudlin approach to giving a one or two word status report instead. Then again, most organics would have a great deal of trouble trying to memorize these obtuse and frankly meaningless sentences. The Legionnaire had no skill in writing eloquently and he was particularly annoyed at the fact that authors of fiction in the past used such bizarre prose to overcomplicate stories to the point of them being nearly unintelligible for the modern man.

"Incursion complete," the Legionnaire drawled.

" _Complications?_ "

"None."

" _Estimated time to begin next phase?_ "

"Immediately."

"Very good," the proxy said as the shadowed figured nodded in approval. "You have permission to proceed."

 _It's not your permission_ , the Legionnaire was so tempted to taunt, but he just gave a curt bob of his head and cut the call unceremoniously.

The cyborg glanced out the window and lifted his palm so that he could situate the golden streams of the data that he had just acquired with the thick soup of black nothingness outside.

"Everything… and nothing," the Legionnaire whispered. "All according to plan."

* * *

 _Berlin, Earth  
_ _Chimera HQ Building  
Europaplatz  
_

Raynor Larsen, Alliance Senator, used both hands to push aside the double maple doors to Erich Koenig's office, ignoring the protests of the secretary outside. Koenig was chatting to someone on voice comm at his mahogany desk, an immaculate view of the European city just out the poster windows behind him. Koenig caught Larsen's eye and motioned for him to take a seat in front of the desk. Larsen ignored him; he could sit wherever he damn well pleased in this building.

"…Look, Duncan," Koenig was continuing to chat to the unseen person on his call, "I don't care if the fucker is stonewalling you. I'll rip your dick off if you don't get me that operational license." He paused for a moment to let the other person talk, but all Larsen could hear was garbled gibberish. "Let me put it another way, you useless excuse for a man, if you don't lean on that representative to get the vote out, I will personally make sure that you and that melted candle of a horse you call your wife will never have a waking moment of peace to yourselves once I leak out that you've been selling photos of your own daughter as wank-material for the inmates in your prisons. You catch my drift now, fuckstick?"

Koenig caught Larsen's eye and bumped his eyebrows at the same time that he gave a manic grin. Larsen gave no reaction – in reality, he was quite weary of Koenig's antics, especially since the man had let his newfound power go to his head as of late. Koenig might have seen Larsen as an ally, but in truth, Larsen had held a deep-seated loathing for Koenig for a long while now. For some reason, Larsen always found himself perturbed at Koenig's display of profanity. Larsen was no stranger to using bad language himself – hell, vulgarity was practically a cornerstone of the senate – but he couldn't shake the fact that whenever Koenig swore, he sounded like a twelve-year-old who had just discovered the word "fuck" and could not resist using it in every sentence.

In short, Koenig swearing just sounded _wrong_.

It was his squeaky voice, Larsen decided. Koenig sounded like he had not quite finished puberty yet, despite him being in his late twenties. Koenig had also lost the genetic lottery by possessing a face that Larsen thought was extremely punchable. Koenig's skin was way too smooth (was this little twerp using _makeup?_ ), his hair was too neat (too much gel), and his teeth were all arrayed in perfect rows, not to mention they a very odd shade of pure white (teeth whitener… not good).

Yet for all his faults, Larsen was able to tolerate his partnership with Koenig… barely. Whether he knew it or not, Koenig was a valuable stooge for Larsen. The usage of Chimera as Earth's defense force had been a major political victory for Larsen when he had brought it to a vote years ago, one that he had required the usage of Koenig to accomplish. And if it weren't for Larsen, Koenig would be in debtor's jail by now, lamenting the failure of his terrible entrepreneurship skills in trying to create a PMC from scratch using his daddy's money. When Larsen had first met Koenig, the latter had been so desperate for capital that he was willing to do anything and everything to keep Chimera afloat, including a lewd offer to give Larsen a blowjob in exchange for a lifeline. And after _that_ offer had been given, Larsen knew he could hang that over Koenig's head for the rest of his life.

Of course, being a senator, Larsen could not report on his financials that he had been the primary source of capital for the PMC that the Systems Alliance was currently employing. There could not be a more clear-cut example of a conflict of interest if Larsen had been stupid enough to finance Chimera himself. Fortunately, he had the know-how and the connections to funnel his money through a bevy of shell companies and other associates to keep Chimera from going under. Larsen's colleagues held some consternation for him being too close to Koenig, but seeing as his association with Chimera was not on any public record, nothing could be done about it.

But that meant that Larsen still had to contend with Koenig.

"Duncan, I don't have any more time to listen to you audibly shit your pants," Koenig was still speaking to the unfortunate sap on the line. "You have to understand that the Prime Minister just walked in. Very important meeting. Really important." Koenig looked so pleased with himself at the white lie while Larsen rolled his eyes. "You and your jizz-mates down in who-gives-a-fuck-land are just going to have to live your lives without our services. That is, unless you can get me that sick suite over in downtown for a week. Then maybe I'll consider it. Enjoy the sodomy and incest in Tuscaloosa, dipshit."

Koenig then waved his hand, causing his omni-tool to shut off. He gave a smile and spread his hands, giving Larsen the impression of a teenager who had just figured out the secret to jacking off.

"Sorry about that, senator," Koenig said breathily. "New clients. New contracts. You know."

Larsen did _not_ know, but he kept his snarky comment to himself.

"You asked for me, I came," Larsen tapped his fingers impatiently on the chair, his ragged and smoky voice cutting through the air. "Obviously what you have to say carries some modicum of importance, yes?"

Normally, Larsen would not talk so openly about his shady dealings, but Koenig was one of the most paranoid people that Larsen had ever known and Larsen knew that Koenig had gone to the trouble of soundproofing and debugging his office every single day. He could speak here without consequence.

"Ah, yes, _that_ ," Koenig gesticulated in excitement. "The word just came in a few hours ago. The first phase of the operation that we sanctioned was a success. Our operative is now moving to the next phase as soon as he is able."

"I'll be damned. That _is_ good news," Larsen admitted. "And the target items in question?"

"In our custody."

Larsen gave a faint nod as he absentmindedly began to stroke his thin, black goatee. "Excellent. Excellent."

"Our patience is only starting to pay off, Raynor!"

"I wouldn't get too complacent. There's still a long way to go."

Koenig looked like he was about to jump up from his chair for he was so giddy. "But we have never been so close to this moment! In perhaps a matter of days, we can finally achieve that future that you told me about when we first met! How long has it been?"

"Too long," Larsen said, knowing that there was more truth than Koenig realized to that fact. "Ten years, I believe."

"Ten years to achieve the goal that humanity should have seized a long time ago! We will give them that opportunity once again!"

"Yes… an opportunity that I've been waiting all my life for," Larsen sighed as he steepled his hands. "Twelve long years to finally overcome the weaknesses, the self-inflicted wounds humanity inflicted upon itself. We once had the chance to reach up and take it all, the galaxy, everything, for ourselves. Yet, in our humility, we kept our arm lowered, never reaching for the stars. Fucking military morons – that Admiral Hackett, especially. If it weren't for him 'graciously declining' the political clout humanity had absorbed from everyone else, we would have the higher ground instead of being on equal footing. And everyone knows that being equal does not guarantee fairness."

Koenig took a decanter from the desk behind him and began to fill a glass with a maple-colored scotch. He offered some to Larsen, who politely declined.

"Don't worry, senator," Koenig smiled after he took a sip of his drink, smacking his lips. "We can still take it all, for the glory of our species. You will soon have everything you need to change humanity for the better. All you need is the proof."

"And I will soon have it! If the operative succeeds, I'll make sure that humanity never forgives the position we put ourselves in. Sharing power with the asari, salarians, and turians! Pah! Their hypocrisy knows no bounds. The other races have much bigger skeletons in the closet than the average dumb citizen could imagine. It's an open secret that our allies engaged in activities that nearly damned us all, Erich, but you can't make any changes based on rumors."

"Which is why the evidence will soon be placed into your lap. And Chimera will be the force to lead the charge for the new humanity."

 _Arrogant little shit_ , Larsen thought. But Koenig's cockiness had a purpose that Larsen could easily exploit. Right now, at least the two of them shared the same goals.

"The new humanity…" Larsen whispered before scratching at his chin. "Humanity is corrupt with cowardice, Erich. There is a severe lack of leadership at the highest levels. We could have pressed the advantage upon the other species for their monumental failures, yet we held back for the sake of… unity. _Unity!_ How many billions of people died because the leaders of the other races made mistakes, Erich? Should we simply forgive and forget all that we have sacrificed?"

"Absolutely not," Koenig gestured with his glass, parroting the exact answer Larsen wanted to hear. Another reason why Larsen kept him around. "The Council made humanity vulnerable during the war. They brought us up to be the sacrificial lamb while they benefited from the delay of their own slaughter. Putting billions of lives up front while they benefitted from such a tactic. If I'm not mistaken, wouldn't that be a _war crime_ , senator? Why should that go unpunished?"

"They shouldn't," Larsen emphasized. "No, they shouldn't. Humanity shouldn't have to kiss the hand that dealt a blow unto it. We should be the ones dealing the blows ourselves. Humanity should be a lion, not a mouse." Larsen gave a pause, catching himself in a state of greater agitation than anticipated, and said to Koenig, "Actually, I wouldn't mind a glass."

"I thought you'd see sense," Koenig smirked as he poured more scotch from the decanter. "It's an eighteen year. From Skye."

Larsen took the offered glass but did not drink just yet. "Over the next coming days, we will finally be able to destroy any misconceptions placed in the heads of all humans. The established institutions will be fraught with peril but we'll bring stability to them in short order. But that will mean tearing down the secure 'truths' that have been built up over the years. The heroics of… some individuals… will cease to exist. After we're done, humanity will be in dire need of a leader after their heroes are thoroughly deconstructed. Admirals… war heroes… _Spectres_ … they'll all be relegated to the dustbin of history. It's time for a reevaluation, Erich. And _we_ will be the ones revising the history books."

Koenig looked concerned for a moment. "Have we figured out how that's going to sit with the citizens? Because if they don't like how we reveal their idols to be traitors—"

"Don't worry about the citizens," Larsen interrupted callously.

"You're not at all concerned?"

"Erich, when you've spend as much time as I have among the voters, you come to learn a very valuable lesson." Larsen then gave a mock salute with his glass before he took his first sip. He tasted smoke and brine in the scotch and he let it linger in his mouth before he swallowed, causing his throat to burn all the way down.

"And… what lesson is that?"

"Simple," Larsen set his glass down on the desk in front of him. "People are sheep. They may bitch and moan if they don't like what the government is doing, but the collective mind of a crowd is pitifully small. The average voter is a moron because individually, they can't do a damn thing about what we're doing. And together, the citizens are nothing but sheep. Simple, brainless, dumb sheep."

* * *

 _Rannoch_

Roahn rushed over to the door as soon as she heard someone knocking upon it. She palmed the touch panel to open the barrier between her and the outside and her smile broadened at the moment she saw a slew of familiar faces (or visors) huddled upon the front steps of her house.

"Been a long time since I've seen _you_ guys," Roahn joked.

Nee, Cevni, and Zayhn all laughed at that. " _Told_ you we'd come to your house, Ro," Nee laughed as she tilted her head playfully.

Roahn frowned slightly as she shuffled herself to the side to block her friends' view from looking past the doorway and into the house. The door slid shut behind her as Roahn stepped onto the porch, leaving her with her friends in the warm and dry air of the morning.

"How did you guys even get here?" Roahn asked as she looked back and forth.

Cevni pointed down the pathway. "Zayhn's dad lent us a couple of speeders."

Roahn saw the angular two-seater vehicles just about a hundred meters away. Hovering above the ground, the speedy hover-bikes were a cheap and efficient method of transportation to traverse quick hops on a planet. Roahn had always wanted to ride one as they looked to be such good fun, but of course her father forbade it.

Speaking of which…

"Is your dad home?" Zayhn asked as she tried to peer through the smoky translucent glass of the front door, bouncing on her toes in her excitement.

Sourly, Roahn chewed her lip. "He's… around," she said carefully. "But I don't know where he is."

That was partially a lie. Roahn knew that every morning, without fail, her father would be up at the crack of dawn to perform his usual routine of calisthenics. He would either be jogging on the beach right about now or performing some stretching exercises in the hills nearby to keep in shape. However, Roahn had no idea how far into Shepard's schedule he had gone to right now, so in some sense Roahn's statement had some truth to it.

Her friends seemed disappointed at that and Roahn saw Cevni nudge Zayhn in a dejected manner.

"You know when he's coming back?" Nee tried.

Roahn gave a curt shrug. "I don't have a clue."

Nee then spread her hands in acceptance. "Ah, well. Maybe next time."

 _I certainly hope not_ , Roahn thought. She did not particularly care for the prospect of introducing her friends to her father. She thought he could be a little too… intense for their tastes, or at least their expectations.

The chilling look on Roahn's face soon vanished as her smile returned. She crossed her arms in amusement as she beheld her friends. "Are we all waiting for anything in particular? Nee, didn't you want all of us to see something?"

"Oh, you're going to love it, Ro!" Cevni said, giddy with anticipation.

"It's so cool!" Zayhn gushed.

Somewhat bemused, Roahn arched an eyebrow as she looked straight at Nee. "Now I'm curious. But, Nee, I swear if you're all messing with me and if this is only going to be another action figure…"

Nee just gave a simple smirk and reached behind her back, drawing out an object slightly bigger than both of the girl's hand spans, wrapped in a thick and itchy blanket. Nee's delicate fingers then tugged upon the blanket, untying the knot that kept it together and revealing it right in front of Roahn.

Roahn gave a jolt. "Is… that real?" she whispered in awe.

"Yeah," Nee bobbed her head in glee. "Totally is."

Roahn gestured her hands towards the object. "May… may I?"

"Go right ahead."

Striving to control her shaking hands, Roahn gingerly lifted the Predator pistol up from Nee's offered palms. Roahn took a few seconds to feel the weight of the gun. She had never held a firearm before – this was much heavier than she would have imagined. But she had spent a countless amount of hours just poring over instructional pistol videos on the extranet, so there was some inherent familiarity to all this.

Roahn pulled the slide back on the pistol, exposing the barrel of the weapon. Empty, as Roahn had figured. If there had been a clip in there, it would have been ejected when Roahn had racked the slide all the way back. Roahn hit the tab to lock the slide back into place, creating a satisfyingly loud _CLICK_. Her hand was way too small in the grip, immediately evident from the amount of space remaining in the trigger guard. Roahn depressed the trigger slightly, finding it to have a pleasant amount of weight to the action. The three dot sights were also easy to utilize – tritium night optics and rather apparent to the eye.

" _Wow_ ," Roahn could only say. "Where'd you get this, Nee?"

"Took it from my dad."

Roahn zipped her head up. "You _stole_ this?"

"What? He's not going to notice. He never uses the thing, anyway."

Nee's words did little to assuage Roahn. She was now starting to get a sensation of a dark and murky liquid pooling in her gut – the kind of dread that approaches when you know you've done something wrong and are just waiting for judgement to be rendered.

"But," Nee continued as she reached into an external pocket, "Look at this!" The girl then raised her fist to reveal several thermal clips glinting dully in the morning light. More items that Nee had stolen from her parents, evidentially. "What do you say? You want to try it out?"

Cevni and Zayhn cheered in agreement and Roahn did a quick look in all directions before she too nodded her consent. This was way more than she had bargained for, but she was still in an adventurous mood for now, so she too responded with some enthusiasm.

Nee pointed to a spot up into the hills about a quarter mile away and the four girls immediately proceeded in that direction. Roahn brought up the rear, excited but also worried. If her father had even seen her in the vague proximity of a gun, she would never see the outside of her house for months on end. Not to mention, she was technically shirking her chores by playing with her friends so early in the morning, but Roahn was definitely not in the mood to do work around the house right now, so it was easy to push that worrying inclination down.

Half an hour later and the kids had traversed so far into the rocky canyons that Roahn could not see her house from this angle. In front of her, Nee was clumsily trying to slot a few thermal clips into the pistol, not knowing how large the actual capacity of the gun was.

"Hey, Roahn," Nee called. "How many clips can the Predator hold again?"

"Should be six," Roahn recalled from memory.

"I forget, have you ever fired a gun before?"

"No," Roahn admitted after a pause. "Never even touched one before today."

Nee paused in loading the gun, her expression blank behind her visor. "Don't you think that's a bit odd? I mean, seeing that your father is…"

Roahn shrugged, cutting Nee off. Whether or not Roahn's heritage had any bearing on her being able to handle a firearm, Roahn knew she was not going to bother to bring it up in open discussion.

"You think this pistol saw action in the war?" Cevni breathily asked after Nee had finished loading it.

"Impossible," Zayhn shook her head, answering in Nee's stead. "Quarian marines were never issued Predators."

"Doesn't mean that Nee's dad could have scrounged it from somewhere and used it."

"Honestly, I have no idea," Nee said as she flicked the safety off, the large pistol wobbling unsteadily in her tiny grip. "What should I shoot first, guys?" When no one piped up, Nee nudged the barrel of the gun near the horizon. "How about seeing if I can hit that _onosho_ tree over there?"

The tree in question was only fifteen yards away from the group – a modest distance to the untrained shooter. The tree was young in comparison to the one near Roahn's house; seven meters tall with small, pink flowers on its stubby branches.

It was as good of a target as any, so Nee lined up her arms, momentarily struggling on where to place her fingers in a passable grip, and lined the sights up as best as she could. She appeared to have some trouble pulling the trigger, finding the act itself to be more difficult than she would have imagined. Roahn was just about to step in and offer a word of advice when the gun suddenly bucked in Nee's hand and a crimson flash emitted from the barrel in less than half a second.

The report echoed through the canyon, followed by the surprised yelps from the children.

"Cool!" Cevni squealed as she jumped up and down, creating tiny dust clouds.

"So awesome," Zayhn breathed.

"That was… _yeah_ …" Roahn breathily nodded in awe.

The fact that the _onosho_ tree was untouched from any bullets was not immediately harped upon by the kids. The four of them were transfixed in place, a bit star-struck at feeling the power in their hands that their parents had once possessed. A potent poison, one that was simultaneously clumsy but incredibly accurate.

Nee gave a low laugh as she turned the pistol over to examine it, perhaps to reflect on her reaching a certain milestone in her life. Perhaps this very day would be one of those days that ends up defining her life from here on out. Perhaps this was one of those important moments.

"I didn't hit it," Nee stopped laughing, the mood becoming more sober as the kids' shared adrenaline began to die down. The girl then placed her feet more firmly into the dirt and straightened her arms again. "I'm going to blast the stupid thing before the day's done."

"Hey!" Zayhn said as she jerked in Nee's direction. "I want a go!"

"Wait your turn!" Nee snarled, startling her friend. "When I use up a full clip, _then_ you can try it."

Her eyes suddenly turning sinister, Nee lowered her head as she lined up her eye to meet the pistol's sights. Adjusting her grip on the gun, Nee took a deep breath as she focused on the sights with her target blurry in the background. There was a muted thrumming in her eardrums and the sounds of Rannoch – the wildlife and the sea – were drowned out in Nee's own little bubble of introversion.

The gun jerked in Nee's hand as she clenched the trigger a second time. Again the shot went wide, sending up a plume of dirt about a dozen meters behind the tree. Nee shook her wrists in pain, unused to the bite of recoil. Growling, the determined girl shot her arms up once more and began unloading on the tree rapidly, losing patience with each missed shot.

Temporarily deafened and frustrated at her inaccuracy, Nee walked closer and closer to the tree, now holding the gun in a one-handed grip in a direct imitation of the heroes from her favorite vids. What Nee did not realize was that one-handed grips drastically reduce the amount of control one has when holding a gun and even though Nee was reducing the distance to her target all the while, her arm was being thrown all over the place with each successive shot, spoiling her accuracy.

But on the final shot, Nee paused for a second longer than normal, holding her breath ever so slightly as she lightly pulled on the trigger with the tip of her finger. The slide of the Predator slammed open, allowing the white-hot thermal clip to sail into the air, streaming trails of blistered heat and gas.

Pink petals from the tree gently floated to the ground, the edges torn and ragged.

Nee released her breath.

"You _got_ it," Roahn just said as she stared at the frayed stump where one of the _onosho's_ branches once remained.

Nee panted as she blankly stared at the pistol, noticing that her grip was shaking a bit. "Yeah…" she dimly nodded. "I guess I did, didn't I?" She then turned around and gestured for Roahn to come over to her. " _Your_ turn, Ro."

For a brief second, Roahn felt like taking the gun was a tremendously bad idea. Icicles unexpectedly seemed to form all around her spine, freezing her in place. Even her joints seemed to swell and ache, a sign for her not to accept the offered weapon.

Yet… Roahn stepped forward nonetheless.

Roahn's fist looked so tiny in the pistol's grip as she lifted it from Nee's hands. She tested the weight again, trying to get herself used to the sensation.

"The tree?" Roahn asked as she lifted the gun in that direction, wanting to confirm with Nee if that was going to be the decided-upon target.

Nee cruelly shook her head as she reached out and gently nudged Roahn's aim to the left. "No. _That_."

Confused, Roahn was about to ask out loud what Nee was up to if she was not going to hit the tree, for there were no other obvious targets around for her to shoot.

But then she understood as she saw what her friend wanted her to aim at.

A Rannochian Long-Eared Marmot, a tiny rodent native to the planet, was on a long, flat rock just a few meters past the _onosho_ , sunning himself in the orange light. The critter was oblivious to the girls nearby and to their sinister plans. The little marmot's nose twitched and it blinked its black eyes open for a short period before closing them again, incorrectly determining that it was not in any danger.

If only it knew that the barrel of a pistol was currently bearing down on his direction.

Wide-eyed and nervous, Roahn glanced over to Nee in confirmation, suddenly being bombarded with second thoughts about what she was getting herself into.

"You don't mean… that?" Roahn tilted her head over to the marmot.

"Oh yes, I do," Nee nearly cackled.

"But…" Roahn stammered, "I thought we were just going to shoot at… at… at things that weren't alive. You know, like trees and rocks and stuff."

"Nah, that gets _boring_. It's not a challenge. Besides, I want to see what you can do, Ro. See if you've picked up on anything from your dad."

Mere mention of her father, along with this change in plan, nearly caused Roahn to explode in rage. "I told you…" she said very deliberately, even though her pistol was still pointed in the direction of the marmot, "…he never taught me _anything!_ "

 _And I don't want to shoot a living thing!_ Roahn nearly said, but refrained from doing so, a decision that would forever shame her.

"Whatever," Nee shrugged callously. "But even so, I bet you can hit it, Ro."

 _No, I can't!_ Ro thought in a panic.

"Come on, Ro," Cevni urged, further pushing her down this path of damnation. "Shoot it!"

"Yeah, Ro," Zayhn also chimed in, her glassy eyes positioned eagerly towards the rodent, seeking violence. "Shoot it."

 _What is wrong with you guys?!_ Roahn wanted to scream. All she wanted was to fire the gun at trees for fun. That was it! Unmoving targets like those should have been enough for everyone, but for some reason, her friends were greedy. They wanted more. They wanted to see bullets rip flesh apart and that marmot over there just so happened to be in the wrong place in the wrong time. Now, Roahn's friends were out for blood, hungry to see the rodent disappear in a red mist of entrails and flesh.

"Shoot it!"

"Shoot, Ro!"

"Take its head off!"

 _Keelah, what did I just promise to do?_ Roahn mournfully thought as her thumb seemed to automatically move of its own accord to flick the safety off the gun. Her hands were visibly trembling as she struggled to keep the pistol steady. Even her lungs seemed to be refusing to cooperate in taking deep breaths. Roahn hyperventilated, blood pounding in her ears as the marmot dissolved into a brownish blur as she concentrated her focus on the gun sights.

 _I'll just miss. I don't have to hit it. Who says I can, anyway?_

But there was still the danger of hitting the creature anyway. Roahn had never fired a pistol before, so who was to say that if she botched her shot, she could do so successfully? The weight of her friends urging her to fire was getting too strong. She felt sweaty under her mask. Her knees began to tremble, struggling to support her own weight.

Roahn's finger scraped upon the trigger, fearing the detonation that was to come. Sturdy springs resisted her movement, and Roahn clenched her teeth as she put more effort into pulling the trigger tight.

" _Do it, Ro_ ," Nee whispered in her ear.

 _No…_

Heart surging, her fingers crying out in agony, Roahn gave a small cry as she clenched her hand as tight as she could, but a static charge along her back, a hidden sense, told her that something was horribly wrong. The panicked shouts from her friends behind her confirmed that as well and Roahn lowered the gun in a daze, feeling woozy and lethargic, and proceeded to turn around to find out what had startled her friends.

Then she realized… someone was _here_ with them.

Before she could turn around completely, though, something reached through the air, an outstretched hand with five fingers, and firmly grabbed the pistol and yanked it out of her hands in the blink of an eye. Roahn's fingers just let the weapon slip through her fingers in her paralytic state, almost too tired to notice that someone was towering over her now, the figure so tall that they were blocking the sun and casting her in a deep shadow.

It was only when the figure spoke did Roahn's blood turn to ice.

"What…"

 _Oh. Oh, Keelah,_ Roahn thought.

"…is…"

 _I'm dead. I'm so dead._

"…the…"

Millions of excuses ran through Roahn's head as she frantically searched for the best one to give.

"…meaning…"

None of them were good enough.

"…of…"

None of them would save her.

"… _this?"_ the tall shadow gritted out, each furious word forced through a strained windpipe.

Trying so very hard not to burst into tears from fear, Roahn forced herself to look up at the person who had interrupted them. The person who had both given her salvation and would, at the same time, doom her.

Yet Roahn faltered underneath the glare of her angry father, finding herself afraid in the face of his unbridled rage.

"Young lady," Shepard said in a voice that was both calm yet brimming with power, his eyes saddened yet enraged as his bearded mouth tried so desperately to not twist into a snarl, "what… in the name of god… were you _thinking?_ "

* * *

 **A/N: So far, I've been getting a lot of positive responses for how Roahn and Shepard's relationship has been presented - good news for you guys, because that's going to be a key issue that will be brought up continually throughout the story. As many of you no doubt have seen, Roahn and Shepard don't get along as well as you might have hoped. Whether that would be a realistic outcome in another alternate future, it's hard to say, but this is my interpretation and I'm excited to see that many of you are going along with it!**

 **I've also been getting some questions on how "Roahn" is pronounced. You say it like "Row" (as in "row your boat") with a hard "n" consonant on the end. Hope that helps!**

 **Playlist:**

 **Window Breach: "Planting the Seed" by Marc Streitenfeld from the film _Prometheus_**

 **The Legionnaire Cometh: "I Am Skull Face" by Ludvig Forssell from the video game _Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain_**

 **The Pistol: "Spores" by Jed Kurzel from the film _Alien: Covenant_**


	4. Chapter 4: The Challenges of Parenting

" _You have been privy to all the evidence we've shown you, yet you still insist that Chimera is guiltless of any wrongdoing. The whole time we've been here we've been garnering the same result. It all seems to me like you're simply claiming ignorance on your part. Am I to believe, as a self-proclaimed informed businessman of your stature, that you have you not read the reactionary reports after your corporation—"  
_ Sen. Michaelson, Australia

"— _Knee-jerk responses from a spiteful media."  
_ Erich Koenig, CEO – Chimera

"— _Accurately sourced and cited write-ups that denote a clear pattern, Mr. Koenig. These media outlets from New York and Washington are respected institutions that have been around for far longer than you or Chimera. Long enough to earn a deserved reputation for fairness and unbiased truth. But back to the matter at hand. East Timor, Anhur, Elysium. Those are just a few of the colonies or areas that Chimera was posted to during its contract. Areas that have been witness to Chimera's penchant for levelling excessive force upon so-called 'enemies of the state.' One year alone produced more than two hundred bodies from your corporation – a rather unnecessary outcome, if you would ask me. And you're going to tell me that your contracted employees felt that it was necessary to kill rather than to capture in every single violent encounter? I would at least love to see that Chimera has a policy that encourages a more non-violent approach, wouldn't you agree?"  
_ Sen. Michaelson, Australia

" _Non-violent? Senator, when has being non-violent ever solved anything?"  
_ Erich Koenig, CEO – Chimera

* * *

 _Rannoch_

Roahn and her friends all trundled back to the house in a silent daze. It was almost midday and the sun was nearly at its zenith in the sky. Roahn felt the heat warp through her enviro-suit, warming her already sweltering body to unbearable levels. She blinked sweat out of her eyes, her visor tinting the sunlight, and stumbled over a stray rock, catching her balance so that she did not tumble down the hill from her clumsiness.

Despite the warm climate, Roahn still felt cold for some reason.

Her friends were petrified with fear and awe all at once as they marched single file through the mountains back towards the sea. Roahn could see Nee and Cevni subtly twitch their heads in Roahn's direction but looking _past_ her, hoping to catch a glimpse of the man walking close behind the group, but they never completely committed to the action as they nervously shot their gazes back towards the front in trepidation. Roahn knew exactly why that was: they were terrified of her father.

Roahn could hear her father's feet heavily trampling the desert grass behind her, a mere meter away from where she was walking. Roahn tried to gulp, but all that did was give her a sharp pain in her throat. Her bones ached and her nerves felt like they were lit up with an electric charge. She felt a paralytic restraint upon her neck, leaving her unable to look back upon her father and to see the expression of utter disapproval on his face.

She just wished that he would say _something_. Anything was preferable to this silent treatment, really. But no, all he had said nary a word ever since they had all started to head back home.

Shepard still held the Predator pistol that he had yanked out of his daughter's hands just minutes prior. He walked with it clutched in his hand, with the safety on, of course. In the instant that he had shown up and surprised his daughter, along with all her friends, everyone had been so shocked and caught off guard that Shepard was unable to get a coherent explanation as to what they were doing with a gun out so far from the house, and neither could he get a reason for why his daughter was aiming the weapon at animals. With nothing more than poorly contrived excuses, Shepard had then curtly ordered the kids back the way they came and was bringing up the rear to make sure that none of them wandered off, stone-faced.

Were she alone, Roahn might have worked up the courage to say something to her dad to protest the situation, but seeing as her friends were within earshot, Roahn did not want to risk embarrassing herself right about now. But quite frankly, all of them were already embarrassed, her friends especially. After all, they had idolized her father (for whatever reason) for who knows how long and upon their first meeting, he had sternly berated them for their inappropriate handling of a gun. Roahn had heard of the expression " _Never meet your heroes_ " before but she never figured that her friends would specifically have to learn that about her own dad.

A few minutes later, the quintet finally made it back out of the hills and near the plain that bordered the cliff wall to the sea. It was only a quarter of a kilometer back to Roahn's house – she could see it right over there – but Shepard was guiding everyone over to the speeders first, the small transports that Roahn's friends had used to arrive here in.

"Stop here," Shepard ordered and all of the girls timidly halted in their tracks. Shepard then pointed to the speeders with an insistent finger. "You girls come by yourselves?"

Nee, Cevni, and Zayhn gave meek nods.

"All right," Shepard said. "Now listen to me, girls. Go home. Go back to your parents and tell them what you were doing out here. If you don't, rest assured, when I inform them later on of what you were doing up in the canyons this morning, you are going to be thankful of letting them know before I do. Is that understood?"

The girls all gasped in horror and Roahn wilted. Bad enough they got caught but her father was only going to make her friends resent her by tattling on them to their parents! Bitter, Roahn lowered her head shamefully.

Roahn's friends began to protest but Shepard merely held up a hand, not at all wanting to hear any more halfhearted excuses. "I'm final on this, girls. I'm not the one you need to explain yourselves to. That's not my responsibility. What is my responsibility is making sure that your parents are fully aware that you were shooting a gun without any supervision. They will deal with you as they see fit."

Cevni began to tremble and Roahn sighed. Cevni's home life was even more troubled than Roahn's, to the point where Cevni was beaten by her parents if she stepped out of line. It was an open secret amongst the group, one that each of Cevni's friends knew but never brought up. Shepard had no way of knowing that, though. Guess Cevni would be having a rough night tonight.

 _Damn it, dad._

Finished, Shepard then turned to go back to the house, expecting Roahn to be right behind him. However, Nee took a tiny step forward, her hand partially stretched out.

"M-Mr. Shepard?" she spoke through a wavering voice. "Can… can I have my dad's gun back?"

Shepard just slowly turned around, his face contorted in a baffled expression. He kept completely silent and continued to hold the gun in front of him, clutching it close to his chest. Without responding to the girl, Shepard just turned back and continued to head over to the house, not even sparing Nee a singular grunt.

Roahn helplessly looked at her friends and gave a useless shrug before her leaden legs directed her back to the house. She knew that she was going to face consequences of her own very soon, so she was not entirely all that sympathetic to the plight of her friends. She would be worse for wear by the day's end, she conceded, so she could only worry about her own hide right now.

 _Here it comes._

Her father was waiting for her in the foyer as she entered. "A pistol," he said suddenly as the door closed behind her, letting the suction of cold air wash over her. Shepard held out his hand where the gun rested. "Not even a day has passed since you've come home and now I find you with a _pistol?_ I thought I had made myself clear year after year. How many times have I told you to stay away from guns? And not only that, I happen to catch you about to shoot a defenseless marmot. _Christ_ , Roahn. Have you not been understanding me all this time?"

"Yes…" Roahn dully responded, having to chew the inside of her cheeks to prevent her from lashing out.

" _Really?_ " Shepard replied in mock surprise. "That's strange, because if you really _did_ understand me, you would not have taken that gun from your friends out there. Have I been speaking a different language all this time? Because if I haven't…"

Roahn hated this game Shepard was playing. This sardonic and knowingly hostile line of questioning was only serving to enrage her to her boiling point right off the bat. If this was a thing that all fathers did, then Roahn vowed never to treat her own children in such a manner.

"So what? I didn't shoot the stupid thing!" Roahn hotly protested, unable to stop herself from blurting out in her defense.

That just made Shepard's bearded face fall. "Don't even go there, young lady," he sighed as he tiredly rubbed at his eyes. "Don't even try to get out of this. You know exactly what you did wrong."

"But I didn't even get to _fire_ the gun!" Roahn continued to seethe, not yet realizing that she was simply continuing to dig her own grave. "Why am I being punished for just _touching_ a gun?!"

Roahn's precarious predicament was evidenced by the cold and sudden anger that furrowed upon Shepard's brow. "That is not the point, Roahn. God damn it, that is not the point _at all!_ " Furiously, Shepard began to rack the slide of the gun, causing all of the thermal clips to sail out of the gun and onto the black tile floor with a loud series of clatters, spilling in all directions. "What I saw back there was you not playing around with your intent. When I saw you, it looked like you were not only willing to fire this thing, but you were willing to _kill_ an animal. Whatever did that animal do to you, Roahn? A simple marmot, minding its own business… and you, my own _daughter_ , would've shot it like it meant _nothing_ to you."

Shepard's words immediately weighed on Roahn's mind and, despite herself, she felt so terribly guilty. Roahn trembled, feeling several inches smaller. She was glad she had a visor covering her face, because her eyes were already beginning to well with tears of shame. But she knew that her father had a sixth sense for pinpointing Roahn's exact emotion, no matter what, and she turned her head away in embarrassment in an attempt to hide her fierce feelings.

She did not want to give her father the satisfaction of winning.

"I… I don't even know what to say, Roahn," Shepard sighed. "I thought you were mature enough to understand exactly why I don't want you using guns at all in this household! But I guess that's still to come. You're just too young to respect the power these things hold. This—," Shepard shook his hand, still holding onto the gun tightly, "—is no toy. It is a _weapon_ designed to kill people! You hear me? Even worse, this is not some pistol that you use for hunting. This model was meant to put down people like you and me, Roahn. Living people. Sentient beings. It was made to make people _die_. And you were going to use it on a marmot. I… I have no words, Roahn."

Through her tears, Roahn angrily looked at her father, wishing that there was no barrier in the way to wipe her tears away. "I wasn't going to shoot the thing, dad! I… I… I didn't think it was right. I was going to miss on purpose. My friends… they were goading me…"

"And how would I have known that you weren't going to shoot it? When I arrived, all I saw was you pointing the thing at the poor critter. It didn't look like you were having second thoughts at all."

"That's because I was trying to aim away from the—," Roahn halted and bit her lip, now realizing that she was fully incapable of changing her father's mood on the matter.

Shepard just shook his head as he slightly knelt down. "But if your friends were trying to make you hurry up and blow that marmot to bits, then you might want to consider if your friends truly have your best interests at heart. Real friends don't pressure you to kill, Roahn. That's not something someone should make on your behalf. Killing and murder – these are not things you should have to concern yourself about, honey."

"Oh right, and you would know all about that, wouldn't you?" Roahn spat before she could stop herself.

Shepard's jaw clenched shut and a tiny spasm of muscle near the corner of his mouth began to twitch. His teeth scraped over each other torturously and the look in his steel-blue eyes turned to ice.

"I'm disappointed that you would say something like that," he simply said, which much have took such restraint for him not to explode in a fury. "It's just… you don't understand. What you think you know, you're not at all close to the truth. What you're doing now, it's not going to help you whatsoever. I told you time and again that there will be no guns in this house. I'm not going to stand for this, Roahn, and you _will_ face consequences for your actions."

Roahn just stared at her father blankly. "You're… so… unbelievable!" she gaped.

Shepard now violently jolted. " _Excuse me?"_

"Why am I getting punished for this?! This is garbage! I'm one of the few people my age who has never even _held_ a gun before – they're used everywhere! _Everyone_ on this planet has a gun, dad! Why do we get to be the outsiders here?!"

"So if everyone on the planet were to jump off a cliff, you would join them?"

Roahn spluttered in a fury. "I… n-no… well… no, but… but that's not the point!"

"Isn't it? You're saying because that everyone you know has a weapon in their house should somehow mean that we should have one too. Young lady, that is nothing but a fallacy. There is no reason for us to have weapons in this home, simple as that."

Roahn had no idea what a fallacy was, but she was getting the gist of it even as she stormed over to the kitchen, fully fed up with trying to argue with her father, trying to avoid him altogether.

Shepard just followed her through the house at a distance, his mouth lined in a craggy frown. "Running away will not solve your problem, Roahn."

"What problem?!" Roahn whirled around as she simultaneously stamped her foot. "Of you being a _hypocrite?!"_

"Roahn, I've been putting up with your childish behavior so far, but now you're trying my patience."

 _Whatever_ , Roahn thought. _I'm dead anyway, right?_

"Dad, you won't let me touch any weapon at all, let alone _look_ at one, even though you've been using them all your life. How many guns did _you_ use in the war? Who did you use those guns on _, dad?_ All I did was hold some stupid pistol. How can you tell me that it is not all right for me to try out a pistol while you were some… some… some big war hero? What did I do wrong compared to you?!"

Shepard's mouth opened but he abruptly closed it, like he was about to say something but at the last moment decided against it.

"There are things that… that you wouldn't understand," Shepard said mournfully as he briefly dipped his gaze to the floor. "Things that you're not old enough to hear. But it doesn't matter anyway. You've already proven to me that you're nowhere near mature enough to handle the responsibility of even handling a firearm. How could I ever think that you should know everything about who I am? You're just not ready, Roahn."

"Only because you won't give me a chance," Roahn glowered as she too looked away. "Mom would've understood me better, at least."

Only then did Roahn realize that she had gone too far. As she looked up, she suddenly became fearful all over again as Shepard's face was now hard as diamond, his eyes brimming with anger from the very insinuation that her mother would have backed Roahn in this argument against her husband. Roahn nearly blurted out that she wanted to take the comment back, but the words died in her throat as soon as she saw her father's hand tremble as it hung limply at his side.

Shepard then raised his arm, pointing toward the hallway. "Your room, Roahn," he breathed, emphasizing each syllable. "Right. Now."

Roahn did not need to be told twice. Flushed with embarrassment, she quickly fled the room, heart pounding in her chest. Her breath felt hot in her helmet and she began to shake as she left her father's presence, resigned to her punishment.

Watching his daughter leave, Shepard was aware that he was beginning to breathe a little more raggedly and he began to clutch at his chest. "That kid…" he muttered as he sagged against the kitchen counter. "Tali, what am I going to do with her?"

Of course he wasn't expecting a response but Shepard quickly lost interest with the conversation he was having with himself, for he noted that cold sweat was springing up on the back of his neck and spots were now appearing in the corners of his vision. He gave a pathetic wheeze, like his lungs were not taking in as much oxygen as they should. He felt dizzy and sick. Something definitely was not right. As Shepard grasped at the collar of his shirt, he quickly deduced that he was having one of his periodic attacks and he stumbled over to the counter to where he kept his injections.

His body was just not as good as it used to be anymore.

Unlike his last dosage, this administration was not as careful this time around. Finding the injector he sought in the drawer, Shepard clumsily lifted his shirt and pressed the plastic end against an area of pinched skin, barely waiting a second before depressing the bright yellow button. There was a tiny sting and the medicine was soon pushed into his body. Sighing, Shepard blithely discarded the spent injector as he slowly slid down to the ground, his throat now feeling parched.

"I can't be a monster to her…" he said out loud, for the sake of his own sanity. "I'd lose Roahn forever."

" _Shepard?_ " a voice in his head piped up.

"Oh no…" Shepard groaned as he shut his eyes, trying to force his mind from wandering away from his own control. "Not now."

" _Is that—you're alive?"_

 _Elsewhere, Shepard blinked._

 _It had been a weird 24 hours of Shepard's life, or at least his second chance at life. From waking up from a near-death coma in a Cerberus facility in space to hoofing it in the dead of night upon a far-away human colony that had been seemingly abandoned, some place on a godforsaken moon called Freedom's Progress, Shepard was still feeling a little disoriented, like he was swimming in mud, several steps behind everyone else. In less than the span of a day, things had only been getting weirder and weirder for Shepard since he got a new lease on life—which had subjected him to one rude surprise after another—until now… when at last, a familiar voice from the past served to jolt him back to memories that rose anew, brought forth from the soothing associations he placed this sound with._

 _The inherent familiarity immediately began to breed a new kind of life into him as he saw this person standing across from him._

 _Tali'Zorah. His crewmate. His friend. Here on Freedom's Progress? Must have been one of the biggest coincidences to occur in the history of the galaxy if this really was happenstance. Blind luck or a manufactured circumstance? Whichever it was, Shepard did not really care all that much, as it turned out._

 _Shepard did not think that this was a mirage or that he was losing it. The suited individual across from him looked like Tali and sounded like Tali. Was it really so hard to believe that it was Tali? For the first time since he had been revived, Shepard felt a grin start to break out across his face, feeling inexplicably happy at the sight of the quarian._

 _Happy. Huh. All of Cerberus' fancy tech and care into bringing him back and yet they couldn't even give him a reason to live._

 _But seeing Tali, on the other hand…_

 _Tali, understandably, was wavering in front of him, apprehensive at the unexpected return of her old commander. Fortunately, Shepard still remembered many details of the conversations he had shared with her in private, particularly regarding Tali's Pilgrimage gift. Recalling that memory was easy and he recited every singular detail to her without fumbling a word, proving that it was him beyond a doubt._

 _From the look of her eyes, it appeared that Tali had stumbled headlong into a mental brick wall. Confusion seeped through her visor, as did yearning. Both Shepard's and Tali's subordinates had silently cleared the room while they had been talking, a thoughtful gesture to give the old friends some peace and quiet._

 _But Tali did not stay silent for long. Or still. That much was apparent when she leaped over to Shepard and encased him in a grateful and jubilant bear hug._

" _You are alive!" Tali yelped gleefully as she nuzzled Shepard with the side of her helmet, nearly crushing the human's ribs from her excited strength._

 _Shepard did not respond right away as he was too shocked at Tali nearly bowling him over to say anything. But being privy to Tali's joy felt like he had been given something that had been missing from him. Some sensation that had been locked away for god knows how long._

 _Whatever it was, it felt good._

 _He gave a little laugh, the effort itself feeling like it tacked on more years to his life. Happiness… yes. Already he was feeling like a new man._

" _Believe me, I'm just as surprised as you are," Shepard responded as he returned the hug before Tali parted from him, her eyes latched onto his in wonder. "But I'm definitely here. With you right now. Completely real, Tali."_

" _This is…" Tali's hands wove a frantic pattern in the air as she tried to decipher what was going on, "…I don't understand. How? How are you here? The Normandy… the explosion… I saw you die, Shepard. I saw… I saw you die."_

 _Shepard sagely nodded as he took one of Tali's hands to calm her. "I was dead. Or I thought I was. I can't really explain how but… I was brought back. For what end, I'm still not completely sure. Hell, I… I only woke up not even twenty hours ago, Tali. You're the first familiar face I've seen since… since…"_

 _Fire and destruction flashed in Shepard's eyes. Reminiscence of a broken ship, his ship, hurtling toward a planet as explosive gases and white-hot beams encased it in a fiery conflagration. Tali sensed this change and squeezed Shepard's hand hard to snap him out of it._

" _It really is you, isn't it?"_

 _Shepard lifted his head and gave a solemn look in affirmation._

 _Tali nodded. "I know who you are. You're Shepard, through and through. They can't give you the memories that such a good man—you—could have known. It really is you, Shepard."_

 _Something stirred inside of Shepard, some sort of inclination to just blurt out an uncontrollable feeling that was only now close to bursting in his brain. This feeling, this longing to be near to Tali, it felt like it had always been inside him. What could this portend? He had never felt this way for Tali before or for… anyone, really. But just seeing her here, watching her expression soften as her trust returned, there was a tangible gratitude that Shepard now held in his chest—a bright mote of light that warmed him from within._

" _Shepard?" Tali tilted her head as she tiptoed closer, not understand. "Are you all right?"_

" _I'm…" Shepard panted as he kept a tight and nervous grip on Tali's hand, which he had still been holding, but he cracked a weary smile as he touched her shoulder, "…I'm going to be much better after today, I guarantee."_

 _Tali similarly beamed._

" _I'm so glad that you—"_

Cold water splashed against Shepard's face as he suddenly lowered his head into the sink, where the faucet was running on full tap, dissolving the memory in a soggy burst. Shepard made a loud gasp, sending droplets of water spewing over the counter, as his face was now waterlogged and his beard became beaded with dampness. Heavily leaning next to the faucet, Shepard continued to breathe long and heavy, using his hand to wash his face, to dispel this stifling heat that had been set upon him. His gut throbbed and his head felt like it was going to split open, but he was back in the here and now, subject to its tangible nature.

Through bleary eyes, Shepard tried to look out the window, where the outside sun was streaming in, blinding him to Rannoch's splendor.

"You're losing it, Shepard," he spoke to himself as he pressed a felt towel against his face, groaning into it. "You can't live in your memories forever."

* * *

Shepard was up and running near his normal self again an hour later, although he was still having to deal with the remnants of a headache—a light pulsation, nothing serious. He was now in his office, nursing a beer, slightly reclining in his plush chair as the muted light from the sun over the ocean filtered in from the darkened windows, causing dim hues to wash over the room.

The holographic image of the man projected sitting across from Shepard, a turian decked out in a casual attire, was also enjoying a drink of his own as he chatted with Shepard. The familiar blue tinge from the hologram projector dampened the array of color that Shepard was able to perceive upon the turian, but if the colors had been accurate, the turian's blue face paint would have been the first thing that was evident when staring upon his friend.

Garrus Vakarian, in the hologram, shrugged and took a swig from his odd-shaped glass, which was filled with some sort of turian liquor. Turians did not have any skin on the sides of their jaws to keep liquids from spilling out of the sides of their mouths, so their glasses had spouts on them so that they could take in their drinks further back.

" _What did you expect?_ " Garrus' scratchy voice emitted across the other end. " _You had to know that this day would come sooner or later. Actually, I'm kind of surprised that she took this long to do it_."

"She was trying to use a weapon without me knowing about it, Garrus," Shepard sighed as he leaned in closer. "I would have thought that Roahn would have come to me first, asking for the umpteenth time if she could handle a gun. But no, she went off and tried to do so under my nose."

" _Kids, right? It's only natural for them to be disobedient_."

A slight smile began to catch on Shepard's face. "Speaking from experience, Vakarian? Last I checked, _you_ didn't have any kids. Unless you and Kasumi recently made some changes that I wasn't privy to?"

The turian on the other end choked on his drink and spent a few seconds simultaneously spluttering and chuckling. " _Nah, Kasumi's still not all that interested. But she does tell me stories from time to time about how human households differ from turian ones. Just to let me know how you humans have it so easy when you were young. From what she says, it's only natural for kids to be in rebellious phases as they get older_." Garrus leaned back in his own chair. " _Didn't apply to me much. I never got into that much trouble as a kid._ "

"Only because you're a saint."

" _I have gotten better at picking up sarcasm, you know_."

Garrus' image stuttered and Shepard frowned as he waited for the hologram to realign itself. Even though the house had a state of the art communication suite all set up, transmitting signals halfway across the galaxy from the Citadel, where Garrus was, over to Rannoch pretty much guaranteed that occasional signal losses would occur. Technology still was not all that reliable over in the middle of nowhere, sadly.

Now Shepard laughed as he took a sip of his beer. "She was right about one thing, though."

" _Who?_ "

"Roahn. She told me that Tali would've understood her better for disobeying our— _my_ —wishes. Which… is completely true. But it was the _way_ that she said it that got to me. Just very… accusatory. Almost like she hated me in that moment."

" _Yikes. How'd you react?_ "

Shepard fidgeted in his chair and took a sideways glance out at the ocean. "Probably not very well. Sent her off to her room and… well, that was the end of _that_ talk."

Garrus' eyes noticeably shifted back and forth as he hunched over a little in his chair. He took a few breaths and cupped his drink absentmindedly before responding. " _You think that was the best thing to do?_ "

"I don't know," Shepard admitted. "Maybe… maybe not. What I do know is that Tali definitely would have handled it better than me. She's always had this… connection with Roahn that I never got. It's like she could intrinsically understand our daughter's feelings, her thoughts. She could calm her with words that I could never conjure, without fail."

As he listened, the subtle tics in Garrus' facial expression began to slightly droop more and more. He had acted as Shepard's right hand man for years, been with him since the very beginning when Shepard had been inducted into the ranks of the Spectres, and had seen the man tackle every obstacle that had the misfortune to cross his path. And yet, being a parent was still this one final challenge, the one difficulty in Shepard's life, that was proving to be a sore point. A frustrated Shepard was one thing, but a helpless one? Now that was nothing short of strange.

" _You're worried that you can't handle her_ ," Garrus stated as he set his glass to the side, on top of an unseen desk, allowing him to fold his hands together.

"I've never been able to handle her. Not since she lost her mother. That's only one of the reasons why I sent her to the academy. To be among people her own age, get an education from someone a whole lot more qualified than me, and… and so that I could not struggle to control her."

Now Garrus coughed uncomfortably. " _I know you probably don't want me giving you parental advice, Shepard—_ "

"Garrus, I'd take advice from Jack right now because I am nearing desperation."

The turian shuddered at that. Jack had been another comrade he and Shepard had recruited during the war. Jack was a powerful biotic and a touch on the chaotic side who had a penchant for a radical sense of style. The tattooed human was known for being rather acerbic with her attitude, not to mention possessing a mouth that would make a sailor blush. Yet, despite all that, she was very successful in her current job working as a teacher at a school for biotic kids. Her students loved her.

But Shepard still thought that Jack was a bit too blunt to deal with someone like Roahn. That was just his personal bias.

" _Perish the thought. But hear me out for a second_."

"I'm all ears."

" _What if_ …" Garrus now raised his hands spread apart, like he was clutching an invisible ball between them, "… _you actually humored her instead of isolating yourself from her? You let Roahn in, I mean?_ "

Shepard blinked. "Come again?"

" _I'm serious. Why not teach Roahn to shoot?_ "

"Garrus…" Shepard sighed as he turned in his chair in exasperation. "Come on. Anything but that. I made a promise, one that I agreed with wholeheartedly, that I would not influence my daughter into going down a path like mine. It's too dangerous."

Garrus scratched at a mandible. " _What, and practically being on your own in the middle of a lightly populated planet is something that you'd consider is safe? Personally, I can't imagine a better person to be an instructor for shooting. It's not that uncommon of a hobby, you know. For crying out loud, shooting's a competitive sport, anyway! It's like the one sport in which all the races can compete in without any handicaps. You should see it on the Citadel, Shepard—the athletes in the competitive teams get treated like the top celebrities whenever they have their traditional meet-and-greets._ "

"Oh, _athletes!_ Very fine role models for my daughter, I'm sure! What better kind of people to idolize than those who are surrounded by booze, sex, and drugs for every waking hour? That's _just_ the sort of exposure I want Roahn to be subjected to."

" _Fine!"_ Garrus rolled his eyes in response to Shepard's sarcasm. _"But shouldn't it be the smart thing to have a weapon on you out there? I mean, you're pretty much in the wilderness. I'm no expert on Rannoch fauna, but if an animal were to come by the house, I'd want something to defend myself with. Wouldn't it also be a good idea to teach Roahn how to use it as well?"_

"There are no dangerous predators out here on Rannoch, Garrus."

Garrus then threw up his hands in exasperation. " _Regardless, everyone has a weapon of some sort on Rannoch. It's 2198—everyone and their mother has a gun, plain and simple, regardless of what planet they're on. If you're not going to teach her to shoot, she is going to learn how from someone sooner or later. And wouldn't you want the person teaching her to at least do it the right way? If you want something done properly…?"_

Shepard ran a hand through his beard tiredly. "You know, that was one of the exact excuses Roahn gave me, believe it or not."

" _Then she's a smarter girl than I figured. Look, Shepard, speaking as a former 'saint' of a child, you and I both should know that if Roahn has this uncontrollable urge to follow her calling, in this case, to be able to use a gun, then it's a foregone conclusion that what you're trying to prevent is going to happen anyway. You might as well expose her to this, to make the unknown familiar. Trust me, if you normalize handling a weapon in the correct manner, Roahn will be less incentivized to disobey you."_

Shepard looked skeptical. "You really think that'll work?"

A wide-eyed Garrus nodded, his image fuzzing slightly from the vigorous motions his head made. " _I know that you don't want to tell Roahn everything about your life. Not yet, at least. But this should be a good step in the right direction for when you eventually take that plunge. I'm willing to bet everything that I own that she's already gotten the broad strokes of who you are as a person already. In today's interconnected environment, anyone with extranet access can know just about anything. I mean… you're… Commander Shepard. No one else has to say anything else because you can't possibly tack on any more importance to that. You're already a hero to your daughter, even if she might not think that right now. But shouldn't she understand why?_ "

Shepard hid his mouth with a hand, silently pondering over the words his friend was saying. He caught the interesting role-reversal that was happening to occur between them. Shepard had been a seasoned soldier when he had first met Garrus, who was a wide-eyed and somewhat naïve cop with a strong sense of justice, but was about as sensitive as a bull in a china shop when it came down to the politics of the judicial process. Shepard had consistently plied Garrus with helpful advice when it was necessary, acting as a mentor to the turian in a few cases, sometimes causing his friend to back down from stances that Garrus had declared imperviable to any changes. Shepard knew that Garrus could always be counted on to see logic and reason when it counted.

Only fair that he returned the favor. For his friend.

"I guess that makes sense," Shepard replied, but both of them already knew that an idea had taken hold in Shepard's mind. And such an idea, when it takes root, is impossible to remove.

Garrus just gave a satisfied laugh and then drained the rest of his drink after plucking it back up from the table where he had previously set it. " _You'll have to let me know how it goes in our next bi-weekly chat. I'd come visit, but you know, you said that it wouldn't be good to have me around._ "

Shepard did not miss the obvious note of snark embedded in Garrus' words and he bit his lip anxiously.

"Garrus…" Shepard then held his head in his hands. "I shouldn't have to explain this to you again."

" _You don't need to! I get why you've imposed this exile on yourself because, and this is all supposition on your end, you think that the Alliance would go to the trouble of tracking your friends to get your firm location. All because you were in contempt of some court? I just… spirits, Shepard."_ Garrus then appeared to look at something outside of Shepard's sight. _"Do you realize that it has almost been ten years since we last saw each other in person? These calls, they don't count. They don't even come close. I mean, I haven't even seen your daughter. I bet she doesn't even know you and I talk so often. You know, that's something that I'd like to do before I kick the proverbial bucket_."

"I know, I _know_. I want her to meet you too, you know that. I would love nothing more than for her to meet all of my friends, to show her off and to let everyone know that I'm hanging in there."

Garrus sensed hesitation. "… _But?_ "

Shepard sighed. "But… can you at least assure me, one hundred percent, that if you were to come here, we would be safe? If you made it to Rannoch, you can swear that the Alliance will not find out about it?"

" _Safe? Shepard, I can't promise you that anywhere. You know that_."

Shepard gave a far-away look. "I do, but that's why I can't take the risk. I told you before. I won't allow Roahn to be in any danger. She _needs_ me, Garrus. Even if she doesn't realize it. I don't want to imagine my daughter's future if I'm not in it. I owe it to her to be there as a father. I owe it to me. I owe it—"

"— _to Tali?"_ Garrus finished, his mandibles twitching once in bemusement.

Shepard flushed, then gave a firm swallow. "Yes. To her. I'm sorry, Garrus, but that's why you can't see her, no matter how much I would love for it to happen. If things back on Earth cool off, then we will be able to share a drink in person but until then, this is what we have to deal with."

Garrus gave Shepard a look of disgust at that, punctuated by a dissatisfied shake of his head. Shepard inwardly wilted at that and he wondered if all he was doing was making things worse by pushing his friends away.

" _Life really was simpler when we had a war over our heads, right?"_ Garrus just asked.

Shepard just looked out the window.

"We knew who we were fighting back then," Shepard said. "But now, I'm not sure I even know who our enemy is now."

* * *

In her room, Roahn lay on her bed, twiddling her thumbs, spacing out as she stared up at the ceiling, ignoring the blue shading in the corners of her vision that her visor was responsible for creating. She was not doing anything in particular right about now, but merely trying to find something to concentrate on in her head that did not cause her blood pressure to unnecessarily spike.

She knew that she should not have blown up like she did at her father. Roahn figured that there were going to be more severe consequences down the line for that. Barely even a day since she had returned home and already she had gotten herself embroiled into a raging argument with him. That had to be some kind of record.

"Stupid…" Roahn muttered as she gently lifted her head up to drop back down on her pillow, not entirely certain whom she was referring to in the moment. "Stupid. Stupid."

Stupid her for forgetting herself. Stupid dad for being so stubborn. This whole thing was just one stupid moment after another and Roahn was helpless to stop the same mistakes from tumbling down the hill to add to the pile.

Perhaps, Roahn figured, she should have known better. Perhaps her judgment had needed to be a lot better this time around. Woe on her for breaking the rules so close to her dad's dominion. After all, her father had been telling her for years on end about the dangers of firearms – maybe his reaction to her disobedience was something entirely justified.

Justified, maybe. But most likely excessive.

Roahn continued to sulk for a bit, frustrated that her dad was unable to understand her position. But Roahn could not figure out how to properly explain her stance to him. How could she possibly convince her father, the supposed 'hero,' that she just wanted a regular childhood like everyone else? That she just wanted her dad to be, for lack of a better word, normal?

But maybe normality had been forever locked away from her years ago. Maybe she had never had a choice.

Finding only tension in reality, she daydreamed of moments outside of the present to escape into.

 _The knock at the door heralded an unexpected surprise. Roahn sat up on the bed eagerly, confused as to who was entering._

 _The door cracked open and a purple visor adorned with a sehni of the same color peeked in, eyes the color of mercury shining behind the smoky barrier._

" _May I come in?" Tali politely asked._

 _Roahn nervously appraised the floor before meeting her mother's eyes, giving a singular nod._

 _Tali walked in and shut the door behind her before making her way over to the bed, where Roahn was sitting cross-legged, a little red action figure toppled over beside her on the plush mattress. Tali picked up the action figure, a depiction of the krogan warrior Urdnot Wrex, and studied it for a few seconds in amusement before placing it on the desk next to the bed._

" _Don't be fooled," Tali smirked to her daughter as she gestured to the action figure. "He's a lot taller in person than he might seem here."_

" _He looks mean," Roahn said, her eyes also similarly locked on the krogan figure. "But… cool, too. Mean and cool."_

 _Tali laughed politely. "He might not have the prettiest face, but Wrex… well, Wrex can be one of the warmest and most hospitable people you could ever know. Scars and all. He looks tough, but he's quite soft underneath." Tali then winked at Roahn. "You just have to get on his good side, though."_

" _Will I ever meet him?" Roahn asked eagerly._

 _Tali sighed and then sat on the edge of her bed, the long tail of her sehni flowing behind her back, giving her a very spirit-like quality. "I certainly hope so, my little Ro. I know that he would love to meet you."_

 _Roahn fell quiet all of a sudden. Tali tilted her head in concern. "What's wrong, Ro?"_

" _You gave an answer to that question," Roahn replied distantly. "Dad didn't."_

" _Asked him what?"_

" _If I was ever going to meet Wrex."_

 _Tali also quieted as she gave a sage nod, now understanding. Roahn was an inquisitive child, and like all inquisitive children, sought out their parents to provide answers to the questions that they possessed. The only problem for Roahn was that one of her parents did not want to answer the questions at all._

" _When I asked dad that, he… he didn't seem to want to answer me. He just got all quiet again. He always just goes quiet. And like at dinner today, when he got mad at me for asking him about his job. I… I…" Roahn choked back a sudden sob as she whirled to her mother. "I wasn't trying to make him angry, mom! I only wanted to know what h-he did during th-the war and stuff! I'm… I'm sorry, mom. I don't want him to be mad at me."_

 _Tali looked lost for a moment and her gaze flashed away for a split second before returning to meet Roahn's eyes._

" _My little Ro, your father's not mad at you. He's not angry at you at all."_

" _But… but… but he looked so… so furious when all I did was ask him if he saw anything bad while he was a soldier."_

" _Sweetheart, please understand. Your father… is a very complicated man. He could never be mad at you for just being a normal six-year old, curious at the galaxy. The truth is simply a little more complicated."_

 _Roahn's eyes shone, silently pleading for more. "I don't understand. What's so complicated about it?"_

" _I'm not sure if I could help you understand. Not right now, at least. But your father was fighting in the war for so long that… that it changed him. Made him very aversive to violence in any form. He dislikes it so much that it pains him to talk about what he did in the past and to think of the people that he lost."_

" _It hurts him?" Roahn nearly gasped. She had never considered this before._

" _In a way," Tali dimly nodded. "Your father, as important as he was to the war, would rather forget it ever happened because he doesn't want that to define him as a person. Also, and you will realize this someday, but the war gave your father a lot of bad memories. I can't even talk about it with him, either. Roahn, what your father and I did before we married, we gave up that part of our lives so that we could create a new one. Start a family. Live in peace. You see now? We deliberately abandoned all that for you, because we wanted you to have the kind of life that we were never afforded."_

 _Roahn looked lost and she shook her head in confusion. "I'm not sure that I get it, mom. I'm sorry."_

" _Don't be," Tali assuaged her daughter as she wrapped her arms around the girl and hugged her tightly. She placed her hands on Roahn's back and patted her there, giving her daughter relief from her touch. "There will be a time when it'll all become clear to you. Maybe then you'll understand why we did what we did. I hope that you'll forgive us then."_

" _Forgive you?" Roahn lifted her head through Tali's embrace, still not fully comprehending. "What… what is there to forgive?"_

 _Behind her visor, Tali gave a sad, unseen smile._

" _More than you could realize," she said before hugging her daughter again._

Another blink of her eyes and Roahn found herself alone on the bed again, still staring up at the ceiling, having never changed her posture all this time. Joints partially stiffened from not moving, Roahn groaned as she sat back up, noting that a whole hour had already passed by. That, and the position of the sun in the sky indicated that she had just burned a lot of the day in her room.

Then again, she _was_ grounded so it was not like she had anywhere to go right about now.

"Mom…" Roahn whispered as she pressed a hand over her heart, fighting to control a biting pain that was building up in her chest.

The white noise of silence eventually drowned out her longing thoughts, allowing Roahn to finally breathe easier.

A bit more relaxed now, Roahn got up from her bed to sit over at her desk, booting up the console screen as she flexed her fingers to stretch them out. Roahn engaged the social networking site that she used the most, to find out if any of her friends were currently online. A quick scan and confirmation of their darkened profile outlines told her that… no, they were not online right now. Either they were still headed to their homes or they had been punished by their respective parents to the point where their extranet privileges had been rescinded.

Damn it. No one to talk to. No one around to hear her vent.

Already bored out of her mind, Roahn resigned herself to mindlessly browsing through a myriad of sites, mostly sticking to discussion blogs and other social hangout places. There was no pattern to the list of topics she was looking up – she was just doing it to kill a bunch of time.

One unfortunate aspect about the extranet (at least for her) was that Roahn was unable to prevent herself from coming across any articles or passages related to the Reaper War at large. It made sense, considering that an annihilation-level event was on the doorstep to the entire galaxy and only the sheerest of luck prevented ultimate disaster from transpiring. People were still feeling the effects to this day and would likely still feel the aftershocks for decades to come. The biggest war that had ever transpired in the entire galaxy – it felt like Roahn had been present for the entire thing, considering how much she knew about it, despite the fact that she had been born a few years after it had ended.

But Roahn always soured when the actual events of the war inevitably linked back to her father in the end. Her father. It was always about her father. Hero of the Citadel. The first human Spectre. Savior of the Galaxy. So many titles to choose from.

Monikers from another life.

If her father was really a hero, why did he not seem like one?

Was the galaxy pulling the largest practical joke on her? Where had the brave man known as Commander Shepard gone? All she saw was just a regular man, her father. Imagining him in his so-called glory days just did not compute for Roahn. She just could not see it.

Roahn was not blind, though. She had seen the proof for herself. Thousands upon thousands of videos and pictures, all showing her father as a warrior in battle. Hefting a rifle on the streets of Thessia. Conferring with generals upon a moon of Palaven. Standing next to a Reaper corpse on Rannoch. Recovering in a hospital bed on Earth. So much proof – surely this all could not possibly be faked?

All the evidence was there for her to peruse. No doubt about it; her father was the most legendary warrior to have ever lived.

What had happened to the man?

Her eyes now drawn to an object on her desk, Roahn reached over and plucked the holographic picture frame from where it sat near the edge. The picture had been in her possession for as long as Roahn could remember. It had been taken a long time ago, when she was still very little. The picture showed a whole other side to the family she had now – a window into the past that hinted at what should have been a brighter future.

In the picture, her mother and father were sitting next to each other, close enough that their hips were touching. Roahn, at five years old, was standing up on a bench behind the two, clad in a very small enviro-suit, leaning forward and wrapping her arms gently around Shepard's neck as she posed for the camera that took the photo. Shepard's hand was intertwined with Tali's closest hand – three fingers tightly gripping five. Tali was gently leaning her head onto Shepard's shoulder, the look in her eyes through her visor unmistakably denoting a smile laced heavily with love. Shepard too was grinning, but his eyes were closed like he was just taking in the moment to the fullest, enjoying himself in the presence of his wife and daughter. His hair had been shorter then. Darker, too. His beard was also cropped a whole lot closer to his face as well.

Everyone had been happy then.

How things had changed.

Maybe if her mother had not gotten sick, Roahn's family would be a little less… broken. There was not a single day where Roahn did not miss Tali. Keelah, she was lonely. In the first few months after Tali had passed away, Roahn could not stop crying. She had loved her mother so much… yet she had gone and there was nothing Roahn could have done to stop it.

As for Shepard… he had mourned in his own way… but what Roahn never forgot is that Shepard never stepped up to be the father he should have been, right at the moment when she needed him the most. He had selfishly locked himself away in that time, but he had never yet realized that he had locked out the only family that was left in the process.

Roahn would never forgive him for that.

Yet that picture… Roahn mused to herself as she focused back onto her mother and father in the frame. What a lovely picture this was.

All she could do in the next hour was stare at it uselessly, imagining all the 'what ifs' had things turned out all right in the end.

What if, indeed.

What if?

* * *

 **A/N: Progress on Cenotaph is proceeding at just the sort of pace that I want right now, which is good news for everyone because that means there's not going to be any year-long gaps in between chapters. And in case you're worried that I might abandon this story at any point, I have more good news because I've made sure to outline Cenotaph's plot from beginning to end, so any gaps due to story concerns is pretty much not an outcome at this point.  
**

 **In any case, I'm interested to see what you guys thought of this latest chapter. Criticism of all forms is welcome (except flaming - no one likes flaming).**

 **Playlist:**

 **Tali Memory I: "Stay With Me" by Clint Mansell from the film _The Fountain_**

 **Tali Memory II: "Life" by Harry Gregson-Williams from the film _Prometheus_**


	5. Chapter 5: Actions Open, Slides Up

" _The apparent inability Chimera has had in being unable to distinguish friend from foe in nearly every one of their deployment sites is also somewhat disconcerting. The evidence is clear—every time Chimera sets up shop, headlines follow. Without fail. I mean, barely a year ago your corporation had six of its contractors kill eight unarmed civilians over in La Paz. Eight civilians were simply at the wrong place at the wrong time and some trigger-happy morons opened fire on them. The resulting trial, if I recall, was quite swift in levelling its judgment, was it not?"  
_ Sen. Karras – European Union (Greece)

" _I do recall that the end result was just and fair, yes."  
_ Erich Koenig, CEO – Chimera

" _Yet these six contractors went through the exact same training programs at your Bakersfield camp that each and every employee of Chimera undergoes, correct? Before we go any further, would it not be unreasonable for us to conjecture that the training camp might be where the root of the problem is located? Or… could it merely be a symptom of the actual cause?"  
_ Sen. Karras – European Union (Greece)

" _I'm not sure. I'll have to consult my notes on the subject."  
_ Erich Koenig, CEO – Chimera

" _Your less than confident response does not have me assuaged as to what you either know or might be hiding, Mr. Koenig."  
_ Sen. Karras – European Union (Greece)

* * *

 _Rannoch_

As he woke, Shepard realized that something was wrong. Quite wrong.

Shepard was not particularly alarmed, though. Nothing in his brain was running rampant, screaming danger. He was still exhibiting the kind of nonchalance that usually accompanies a person in the first few minutes after rising from sleep. The only trouble was that right now, Shepard had an unusual pain in the back of his neck, almost like someone was sticking a needle into his spine and was going to town by twisting it this way and that. The pain was sharp and focused, agonizing but at the same time, not completely debilitating.

Damned if it didn't hurt, though.

Shepard feebly swallowed before he took a breath. Cold air poured into his lungs and, on instinct, he sat up from the chair in an instant. The pain miraculously evaporated now that the pressure from sleeping in a weird position on his back had been removed.

He immediately grimaced as he rubbed at the sore spot on his neck. Shepard dug his fingers into the muscle there, trying to iron out the kinks he had earned from sleeping upright in his chair. Damn it all, if only he had not been so lazy to actually walk a few yards over to his bed instead of slouching in his chair in the office for the entire night, he would not have to contend with these annoyances at first light.

Aches and pains. All part of getting older. But these pains were slowly getting worse every year. All stemming from the same cause. Aging was not going as gracefully as he would have hoped. Shepard knew that he was not in as good shape as he used to be and he sighed as he leaned forward, rubbing at his eyes to clear the milky myopia of wavy tendrils from his sight.

" _Argh_ …" Shepard muttered as something in his neck cracked. "Son of a…"

It would not be a complete morning for Shepard without something in his body going awry, after all.

It was still early in the day, though. Early enough for Shepard to tend to all of his usual activities at his normal schedule. He scratched at his snow-white beard as he slowly stood up from the chair, emitting a series of additional creaks and snaps from his knees as his legs took his weight. Shepard bent backward a bit, crackling his spine to the tune of dry crunches, before embarking upon some stretches to give himself the most flexibility his limbs could offer before he tackled the day anew.

Shepard made a beeline for the coffee machine the very instant he entered the kitchen and soon the room was filled with the grinding noise of beans being pulverized into powder. Five minutes later and Shepard was gratefully nursing a steaming cup, willing for the caffeine to reach his brain quickly so that he could wake up all the more faster.

Ah, caffeine. The gateway drug to suppressing a good night's rest.

After draining about a quarter of his mug's contents, Shepard automatically reached down to one of the kitchen's cabinets, close to where the sink was—a force of habit. He pulled the cabinet out, revealing the clear plastic injectors that carried his necessary serum, a nice array of them all meticulously lined in their boxes, ready to be utilized at a moment's notice.

But another object was inhabiting the cabinet with them.

Shepard could only stare at the Predator pistol sharing the space, nestled all the way in the back, draped in shadow. The very same pistol he had pulled out from his daughter's hands just yesterday.

Killing power. One that had been nestled in the hands of a child. What kind of a galaxy had he woken up to?

Shepard's brow furrowed as he leaned against the counter, feeling unreasonably heavy, his eyes boring right into the frame of the pistol. A pistol. In this house. Were he a more unreasonable man he would have chucked the thing into the ocean the very first second it had crossed the boundary of his land. But no, Shepard had kept it, unable to think of a good reason as to why he might dispose of it right off the bat. Thus, it was currently being kept in the kitchen, in a place that Roahn would not think to look first. Tucked away in some unassuming kitchen cabinet, amongst the very objects that prolonged Shepard's life. Shepard did not miss the irony that was present in his decision.

Regardless, Shepard mused, a cabinet was no place to keep a gun. He needed a safe or some place he could lock it away and not have to worry about it afterward. Without any other options, though, Shepard was stuck having to poorly hide the gun in his house. He had assumed that, for the rest of his life, he would never have had to introduce a gun to his family for as long as he lived.

Showed what he knew. It had taken twelve years, but one had finally found its way back into his hands anyway. Through his own daughter. What a miserable joke. Such an easy promise and he could not even keep _that_.

A pistol would bring the family nothing but trouble, Shepard knew. If only he could get rid of it. Thinking of its destruction was the easy part, and it would certainly feel so good just to take that damned pistol and smash it on the counter, cracking its polymer housing in to pieces to let the metallic and sensitive innards spill forth in a blinding clatter—

" _What if you actually humored her?"_

Shepard regretfully shut his eyes as he bent his head forward, as if in prayer, letting Garrus' words ring throughout his head. "If only things could be so simple," he sighed to himself before he opened his eyes again.

 _But what if it actually was that simple?_

Frowning as a little voice teased inside his head, Shepard resorted to staring out the window mournfully. First Garrus, now his subconscious. Just how alone was he in trying to keep a tight hold on his own perceptions?

"I don't know if it's the right thing to do," he whispered. "Give an inch, take a mile."

 _Give nothing, lose everything. Flip side of the coin, eh?_

"Or…" Shepard realized, a brightness flickering in his eyes, "give _understanding_. Teach humility through experience. I… that way… I _can_ humor her. Hell, Garrus, you were probably on the right track after all."

 _See? Now you're catching on._

After polishing off his coffee, Shepard set the empty mug down in the sink and then walked over to Roahn's room, passing through the spacious and sparsely furnished living area to reach the hallway where her door was located. The dim hallway was lit only from the morning sun and soon Shepard was walking into darkness as he approached the foreboding entrance.

Smartly, Shepard rapped upon the door with his knuckles. "Roahn, are you awake?"

No answer, but Shepard had expected this sort of response. Rather than wait for his daughter to finally pipe up, Shepard pressed his hand against the door face, causing it to open a crack.

Roahn was still lying on her bed, curled up in a fetal position. The glow from beyond her blue visor was an indication that she was indeed awake, but the twin motes of her eyes were focused in an accusatory glare. As expected, she was still mad at him for yesterday. Not that he could blame her—they had not exactly parted on good terms before the day's end.

Shepard did not bristle under the withering gaze. He had been exposed to worse things than a moody glare from his own daughter to get him to make a reaction. Instead, he stepped into Roahn's room and cleared his throat.

"Fix yourself something to eat, Roahn," Shepard said, not quite ordering her, but his tone was not all that warm either. "Then get yourself ready. I want us to leave in less than an hour."

Roahn used an arm to prop herself up, eyes still lowered in suspicion. "I have to do chores?" she asked, trying to guess her father's intent.

Shepard just shook his head, ignoring Roahn's initial annoyance. "I took some time to think things over the other day and… and I believe that you did have a point back then." Shepard noted that Roahn was now sitting up – for good reason as Shepard had barely taken Roahn's side in an argument before.

Still intent on continuing, Shepard swallowed, allowing a rare moment of shyness to be revealed in his wary expression. "I think we both said some things in the heat of the moment the other day that we probably didn't mean, and I apologize if you think I stepped out of line. I do care about you, Roahn, and I just want to make sure that you grow up safe from harm. Do you understand?"

"I think so," Roahn answered as she placed her hands limply upon her knees as her legs dangled off the edge of the bed. This kind of self-reflection from her father was practically unheard of and Roahn was pretty much shocked at this emotional display. "I'm sorry for what I said to you too, dad."

"That's all right," Shepard smiled thinly. "But it stands to reason that you and I… I want us to be on the same page. You're my daughter and you deserve to have the one remaining parent in your life do right by you. So, what I have decided is that I… I will teach you how to handle a gun, if… if that is what you would like."

It probably took ten seconds for that to fully register in Roahn's brain. Had she seriously just heard what she thought she heard?

"Are you _serious?_ " Roahn squeaked, hardly daring to believe her luck.

"If this is going to be a skill that you're dead-set on learning, then I'm going to make sure that you learn it the right way," Shepard emphasized sternly. "Two things first: you will not be taking hints or dispensing my lessons on shooting to or from your feather-brained friends, nor will you be allowed to carry this gun out of the house without my supervision. You are going to treat this weapon with the utmost respect and that means that you will have to earn my trust on that. If you can abide by my rules, then… I will teach you what I know."

If Shepard had the ability to see past Roahn's visor, he would have had a clear view of the girl's open jaw as she sat dumbstruck on the bed. Shepard nearly cracked a wider smile at his daughter's reaction, but the conversation that they had shared yesterday was still way too fresh in Shepard's mind for him to find humor in the situation just yet.

"Well?" Shepard indicated slyly as he turned to leave, cocking his head over toward the kitchen. "This is what you wanted, right? You up for this?"

Roahn's mind fizzled blankly as she tried to process this capitulation from her father. Initially, she had thought there had to have been some ulterior motive for Shepard to seemingly let Roahn finally use a gun. Was this part of some crafty new punishment that he had concocted? A psychological tactic designed to humiliate her? But the more she thought about it, it seemed like her father was actually being _sincere_. And, to her shame, Roahn realized that her father would never in a million years go out of his way to shame her to the point of breaking. That was just not his forte.

But this… was a fresh start. A new privilege for her to earn. This was better than she could imagine! A clear way to prove her maturity to her dad!

"Of course I'm up for this!" Roahn said as she hopped off the bed so that she could rush to scarf her breakfast down, and she nearly bowled Shepard over as she raced through the house to the kitchen.

It was hard for her to tamper down her enthusiasm, but damned if she could try to have this big smile wiped off her face. Never in a long while had Roahn been looking forward to spending a little time with her dad.

* * *

 _Holy shit_ , was all Roahn could think.

A very human expletive, but she had heard it used enough around the house to understand what it meant. Roahn's father had trouble watching his language sometimes.

 _Holy shit_.

 _Holy shit!_

Her dad was actually taking her shooting!

Roahn had gotten herself fed and ready in record time, speeding to the front door where Shepard had been patiently waiting by for her. He was still trying to stifle a smile of his own at seeing her excitement, but could not help himself knowing that his daughter was enthusiastic about something. It was a lightness in his chest that spoke to him – his little girl was actually happy. Chemicals in the brain—endorphins—saturated his emotions with pleasurable feelings at witnessing his family start to come together.

Was this part of that normality that he had been searching for?

The Rannoch morning greeted Shepard and Roahn with patchy clouds partially canvassing an orange and purple sky. A backdrop of stars were still twinkling overhead—the result of a nonexistent smog layer—and both father and daughter could see a band of star clusters and noble gases over near the horizon as part of a faraway cloud of light-colored smoke: the Milky Way. Rannoch's sun had already burned away most of the fog, but the temperature was still chilly enough for Shepard to put on a jacket. The wind from the sea tore at them, threatening to carry them up toward the mountains a few miles away.

Locking the door behind them, the two of them hooked an immediate right as they set out from the house, headed toward the cliff that overlooked the sea. Shepard had a knapsack thrown over his shoulder and he had the Predator pistol held in one hand, with his fingers well away from the trigger. Roahn trailed close behind, her eyes looking up in awe at her dad, as if she was suddenly seeing him in a new light.

Shepard and Roahn took the trail down the cliff to the beach below, where the cold sea winds still tugged at them. The beach was sectioned by terrain: one part was coated with deep, soft sand, another was layered with a spread of rough pebbles that could tear into the underside of an unprotected foot, and near the cliffs, was a rocky section where gigantic boulders twice Shepard's size loomed, pounded by the waves for eons until they had turned completely smooth. It was over by the boulders that Shepard walked, unslinging his knapsack as he went.

"I thought we were going to head into the mountains," Roahn said as she watched her father take a blanket from the pack and lay it out upon the ground.

Shepard arranged the pistol and five empty beer bottles in a meticulous row in front of him. "Not much sense to travel all that distance for something like this. Besides, there's no one around for miles. We can shoot safely here, as long as we're pointing towards the sea. That way, there's no chance we'll hit anything."

He did have a point, Roahn conceded, and Shepard soon gestured for her to take a seat beside him as he utilized a particularly wide boulder as a bench.

"So, Roahn," Shepard said as he pointed to the pistol lying innocently in front of them. "How would you like to start this?"

Not prepared for having so much responsibility thrust at her all at once, Roahn shrugged.

"I… don't know where to begin," she admitted.

"Okay," Shepard nodded. "Then let's break this down a bit. How much do you know about firing a gun?"

"How much? Just… just point and shoot, right?"

Right away, Roahn knew that was not the correct answer, but it had tumbled out of her mouth before she had even thought about what she had said.

Shepard politely chuckled as he rubbed his hands together. This was going to be a bit more extensive than he had originally thought. Then again, the right way was not always the simplest way.

"It's a little more technical than that," Shepard said as he leaned forward and picked up the gun. He slid the slide back and locked it open so that Roahn could see down into the barrel. "Look into that. You notice that there's no thermal clips, yeah? No gray-looking cylinders in the slot? So, the first thing you do about picking up _any_ weapon at all is to make sure that it's safe. You do that by checking to see if the gun's loaded with clips _and_ if the safety's at all engaged—which you can see right here that it is."

There was a tiny black button on the back of the gun that Shepard now indicated with his thumb. Shepard depressed the button once, causing a very tactile clacking noise to emit. The button then turned red as it sunk into the frame a couple of millimeters. Giving Roahn time to study the safety, Shepard hit the button once more, turning it black again.

"Red for off, then?" Roahn looked at her father for confirmation.

"That's how it is for all weapons. Black for safe. Red for un-safe."

Shepard then reached down into his pack and withdrew a cylindrical object, a little more than half as tall as a soda can, that was etched with metallic red lines upon its face. He lifted it up so that a few rays of the sun could glint off of it, and Shepard wrinkled his nose as a fresh slew of brine scent reached him from the ocean.

"Do you know how many thermal clips a Predator pistol can hold?" he asked his daughter.

"Six," Roahn answered confidentially.

"That's correct. Know how many shots per clip?"

"Fifteen."

A dry smile reached Shepard's face and he then held out his arms, offering both the pistol and the clip for Roahn to take. Tentatively, Roahn lifted the objects away from her father and placed them into her lap, her gaze hopelessly locked onto them, deep in thought. From the last time she had held onto this gun, it had inexplicably seemed to have increased in weight now. There was a strong vibration in her fingers from where she touched the mechanism, finding that there was a dark pulse reverberating within the back of her mind.

"Try slotting in a thermal clip. If you want help—"

"I think I have it," Roahn said, trying so very hard not to sound impatient or that she was snapping at her dad.

Roahn took the thermal clip and inserted it into the Predator in the correct fashion. Roahn had to use her thumb to jam the clip in fully, but it soon clicked snugly in place within the gun. Satisfied at herself, Roahn looked to Shepard for further instructions.

Shepard pointed to a little tab on the side of the gun. "Flip that right there."

Roahn did and the slide clicked closed with an immediate snap.

"That's it," Shepard proclaimed. "You're locked and loaded right there."

Roahn hefted the gun, a tiny fragment in the corner of her eyes now lidded with a fearful respect. Shepard, meanwhile, just clasped his hands together and stared out toward the horizon, squinting his eyes as to not be blinded by the millions of tiny reflections the sun beamed at him from the water.

"You're lucky, you know," he whispered. Roahn's head immediately shot over in his direction, a little confused. "When I was starting out in the marines," Shepard explained, "all the guns we had used a different technology. We had to _wait_ for our heat sinks to cool down rather than just ejecting them from the gun itself. We could shoot more bullets at a time, but it took probably five times longer for us to be able to shoot again if we overheated those weapons." Shepard then chuckled as he got to his feet, groaning as his knees buckled slightly, overwhelmed in age. "I'll never forget how confused I was when I grabbed one of those new pistols for the first time. I didn't know what I was doing when I kept trying to fire it. Must have spent a long time uselessly trying to figure out why the hell someone would make a gun without any clips in it. Thought it might have been a manufacturing error at first. Eventually I understood how to work it, though it wasn't my finest moment, let me tell you."

Shepard then crossed his arms, taking in the scenery before looking back to his daughter, who was still staring up at him, implicitly waiting to hear more.

"Ah, but enough about me," Shepard said, not noticing Roahn's amazement from the brief little window he had allotted her into his past. "Stand up. Let's see your stance."

Snapping back to her senses, Roahn got up from the rock and, after some hesitation, nervously shuffled into what she thought was the correct position: feet spread apart, slightly leaning forward, and holding the pistol outward with her right hand with her left hand cupping the bottom of the grip.

Shepard took a few seconds to examine his daughter's routine before he shook his head with a tiny sigh. "Nope. All right, stand back up straight, Roahn. Let me show you what you're doing wrong."

Roahn did so, blinking furiously as she was wracking her brain to figure out what part of what she had been doing was incorrect. Shepard then held his hand out, a silent request to have the pistol back to demonstrate, and Roahn granted him that as she delicately deposited the gun in his waiting palm.

"For starters," Shepard held the Predator up, pointing the barrel to the sky, "you never, ever, _ever_ put your finger on the trigger… unless you are one hundred percent certain that you are ready to fire." He wiggled his index finger for emphasis. "Put your finger on the side of the gun, _above_ the trigger, until you reach that point, but do not touch that trigger until you are already aiming it downrange."

"Okay, dad," Roahn nodded, filing that tidbit away in her memory.

"Second of all, we need to talk about your grip. Why do you think I'm asking you about that? Do you remember what kind of grip you were using before?"

Roahn looked down at her hands before appraising her father. "I… I had my right hand around the handgrip… and my left… was cupping underneath the grip."

Shepard smiled as he made a small gesture in his daughter's direction. "And what do you think was wrong with that?" When Roahn couldn't give an answer, he continued. "Having your left hand cupping the handgrip does absolutely nothing. Really, it doesn't do anything. You've probably seen too many vids that show people holding guns like that for style or something. But vids are not like real life. Gunfighting on a screen is fake. Out here, it's real. This isn't some like something on a sanitized set. In the real world, you feel the pressure in your ears as each gunshot whizzes by your head. You're constantly slipping in blood as you make your way from objective to objective. And you're never going to escape the screams of men and women as they beg for their mothers while—"

Shepard abruptly cut himself off with a series of quick blinks, like he had just woken up from a dream. Realizing that he had been inappropriately rambling, he sheepishly dipped his head towards Roahn, who had been staying silent the whole time.

"Sorry, Roahn," Shepard murmured. "Where… where we were?"

"Uh…" Roahn said before she too came to her senses, clearly unnerved from the vivid descriptions her father had just laid out for her. "I think we were talking about grip?"

"Oh, grip! Right. So, yeah, the cup method isn't going to work for any sort of gun. Instead, what you want to do is use a two-handed grip. Watch here—you take your left hand and wrap your fingers around the fingers of your right hand." Shepard acted out what he was doing so that Roahn could get a better view, making sure to watch each word he was saying lest he slip off into a tangent again. "Also, you see that my right thumb is wrapped around the left side of the pistol? Okay, so now, you take your left thumb and position it directly underneath your right thumb so that it acts as a firm point to rest against."

Unwrapping his hands from the pistol, Shepard then gave it back to Roahn so that she could mimic the actions herself. She screwed up her eyes in concentration as she delicately and methodically followed each and every one of Shepard's instructions, and before long she was using the sort of stance that Shepard had just described in half a minute.

"Like this?" Roahn asked when she felt that she had it down.

Leaning back and forth, Shepard took a good hard look at what Roahn was doing before nodding to his satisfaction.

"You've got it," Shepard said, impressed that Roahn was a quick study. "Now, instead of you only having one arm to take all the recoil, you now have two. That extra support will make things much easier for you in the long run. You will fatigue less quickly and you will be able to focus in on your next shot a whole lot quicker. Okay, set the gun down for a second while I help set you up."

Roahn watched as Shepard took one of the empty beer bottles before walking out towards the sea, particularly toward a cluster of boulders that erupted from the sand like desert serpents. Not knowing what to think at this moment, she just watched as her father set the empty bottle upright on one of the boulders a couple dozen yards away before heading back, retracing over his footprints in the soft sand as he went along the beach.

So far, this day was playing out very weirdly, Roahn figured. She was talking to her dad very… casually. As if nothing was out of the ordinary. How strange this was, to spend her time like this.

Maybe this was just the universe telling her to enjoy this moment while it lasted.

Roahn leaned forward upon the rock, her thoughts clashing with each other like waves in a storm. She did not want to admit it just yet, but she was feeling glad about all this. This… bonding. It felt like she had not breathed this easy in years. The barest hint of that piece she had been missing was just starting to rear its head right about now and Roahn so desperately wanted it to finally be revealed to her.

She still kept her hopes down, though. Never know when disappointment might be around the corner.

Shepard pointed behind him towards the bottle as he approached Roahn, the back of his jacket flapping in the wind. "Got your target all set up for you over there. Pick up the gun when you're ready."

Heart now racing, Roahn bent down and plucked the loaded Predator up from where she had placed it on the blanket. She walked over until she was perpendicular to her target, her boots sinking into the sand, the ocean acting as the backdrop. Roahn remembered to keep her finger well away from the trigger as she slowly began to lift the gun up, taking the time to press the safety off as she lined up her shot.

"It's a three dot sight," Shepard knelt down behind Roahn. "You want to line the middle notch up so that it's the same height as the other two notches. But the middle notch will have to cover your target in order for you to land a hit." Seeing Roahn's eyes narrow in concentration, Shepard hesitated a bit before giving her a comforting pat on the back. "All right. It's all yours, Roahn. Fire when you're ready."

That droning noise in Roahn's ear was returning—the same sound that had graced her when she was holding this very same weapon up to bear just yesterday. A soft, subtle vibration in her ears but powerful enough to dampen the howl of the wind, the roar of the waves, the brushing of the sand. She could feel the palpitations of her heart all the more clearly as it thumped against her chest, minutely shaking her arms, which were beginning to tremble from the pressure of holding death in her palms.

Roahn closed her left eye as she lined the sights up with her right. Carefully, she moved her arms very slowly as she gradually obscured the beer bottle upon the boulder with the blocky, rectangular gun notch. The outside world blurred as she focused upon the back of the gun first, but soon even the gun disappeared in a dark-colored blob as she forced herself to look beyond what she was holding, finding that every single miniscule detail of the beach was presented so vividly, so crystal-clear to her.

Soapy bubbles of sea foam dripping from waves.

Individual shimmering specks of sand glinting like gold.

A hint of movement from a crab scuttling along the dirt.

The wrinkles and imperfections in the rock, scratches and scars worn away from time.

The tactile feel of the trigger in her hand.

 _KRA-KOW!_

The gun bucked backwards in Roahn's grip, but her arms had been tensed so tight that they were practically locked up. The recoil traveled up her wrists and died near her forearms—the girl found that she had been able to take the brunt of the force quite nicely. A brief plume of flame had existed for less than a micro-second, but the remnants of the flash were still seared in her eyes, and Roahn blinked dumbly, like she had been temporarily blinded.

The column of dirt and sand that had erupted a foot from the rock upon which the bottle sat finally finished falling to earth in a brown-ish outline. A fresh hole marred the smooth beach, with chunks of wet sand clumps lying around the new entrance.

A miss, but Roahn could not care at all. She was still feeling the effects from the brief spike of adrenaline that her system had given her.

What a rush! Feeling that gun just explode in her hands only for her to catch the brunt and bring the bucking pistol under control! The trigger had been easy to pull too, with a very clean break. It was almost if Roahn could have brushed a feather against it. She slowly let out a low, whistling breath of awe, fighting the urge to jump in place, her entire mind now brimming with limitless and uncontrollable energy.

"A good start," Roahn heard her father say behind her. "You've still got fourteen more shots in that clip. Want to keep shooting?"

"Yea-Yeah…" Roahn breathily nodded, eyes now wide open in astonishment. Almost eagerly, Roahn lifted the Predator back up and tilted her head to bring the sights in alignment once more, spending a mere three seconds in lining up her next shot.

The trigger made a tiny scraping click as Roahn's finger found it.

The gun shoved itself upwards again as Roahn fired the gun, but the girl had expected this kind of ferocity from the recoil and she was able to better manage it this time around. More sand puffed near the ground from another miss, but that was immaterial to Roahn. Her breath slithered in and out of her lungs as she kept on lining her target up in her eyes, pulling the trigger each time she thought she had a decent shot.

Shepard did not say any words to Roahn as she proceeded to gradually empty the clip in front of him. He did not even wince as the pistol barked so close to him—a lifetime of handling such dangerous weapons had partially deafened him over time, not to mention that he was already used to the loud noises anyway from his participation in his warring days.

He simply watched and observed his daughter shoot.

When the Roahn fired the final shot her last clip had to offer, the pistol's barrel slide automatically slid open, causing the thermal clip to be ejected in a wide arc, well away from the user. The red-hot clip tumbled end over end to finally land in the wet sand, emitting a screen of steam as the moisture came into contact with the burning metal surface.

 _Wow_ , Roahn thought. _I'm shaking all over._

"Make sure you put the safety on," Shepard reminded Roahn as the girl continued to stand in place, so overcome by adrenaline that all of her nerves were hopelessly addled. In a daze, Roahn finally broke from her paralysis and slowly handed the gun to Shepard, grip-first.

"So," Shepard began, chewing his lip, "what did you think?"

Roahn stared at the ground for a bit until she mustered the strength to meet her father's eyes. "It's… it's a bit different. More than… than I thought."

"Thought it would be easy, did you?"

"I guess," Roahn shrugged. "Honestly, I didn't expect it to be so… rough. So violent."

"No one ever does," Shepard nodded sympathetically. "Not for their first time." He then sat on the flat boulder again, motioning for his daughter to sit next to him. "Roahn, I hope you understand what we're doing here in the first place. I'm trying to help you realize that there's nothing glamorous about this at all. Firing a gun can be used for sport, yes, and also for fun, but beyond that, I want you to understand that this is a very dangerous item. Guns were not designed so that they could be easy for everyone to use—they were designed to kill, first and foremost."

"I… I understand," Roahn said, never breaking eye contact.

She then looked at her hands, finding that the muscle there was still tense from her having gripped the gun so tightly. The skin might even be bruised underneath. She clenched her fingers into fists to quell the shakes, almost as if she was trying to drive out the demons that had inhabited her hands.

Shepard watched his daughter before offering her the pistol back. "Did you want another go? See if you can hit the bottle?"

The pistol loomed in Roahn's vision as she sat, hunched over, finding the grip of the gun to seemingly be magnified in her eyes. With her fingers splayed out like talons, Roahn reached out and slowly took the gun back, having eliminated the trembling that had briefly possessed her body a few seconds ago.

Shepard passed Roahn another thermal clip for her to use and then gestured to the untouched beer bottle that was still sitting proudly yards away from them. "Before you go for your next round, do you want a few tips on how to improve your aim?"

"Sure," Roahn said as she walked back out to her original position to shoot. She was not so arrogant as to refuse assistance for this. After all, she still had not yet hit her target, despite the fifteen rounds she had already unleashed in its direction.

"I would suggest that you only need to use the tip of your finger to pull the trigger with. You don't need to wrap your entire finger around. That way, your finger will be more inclined to pull backward instead of to the side, which should prevent you from spoiling your shot. Also, I've noticed that most of your shots are coming in low and to the left. That tells me that you might be anticipating your shots before you fire, which means that you're sort of jerking forward right as you pull the trigger. Try to keep that under control and still your body completely. Your finger is the only part of your body that needs to move in that moment. Remember: only your finger."

Roahn shifted her heels into the sand, offering more grip. She stuck her tongue partially out of her mouth as she aimed her pistol, her mind now aching as she tried to comprehend each and every miniscule detail about her stance.

"Did you have to think about this a lot when you were in battle?" Roahn asked before she even knew what she was talking about. She clamped her mouth shut in embarrassment as she realized that she had just committed a faux pas with her father by asking him about the war.

But Shepard continued staring out into the horizon after taking a brief moment for introspection. "It was something that became second nature early on," he merely said. "It gets easy way too quickly."

Counting her lucky stars that she had gotten away with her question, Roahn held her breath as she started concentrating back onto the glass bottle, imagining it shattering into a million pieces from the spark of deadly metal she would send shooting its way in mere moments.

Roahn barely felt the first shot out of the clip as she only had to touch the trigger, just like her father said. The pistol rocked up a couple inches, but Roahn was able to bring it back under control very quickly, now that she was getting the hang of this. She couldn't see where her bullet had landed, but the fact that the sand had not popped in front of the target indicated that she was zeroing on the bulls-eye ever so slightly.

"A few inches on the left," Shepard called out, managing to see where the bullet had hit thanks to his practiced eye.

Frowning, Roahn shifted her arms a little and fired off the next round. Clumps of wet sand peppered the boulder. Smoke and steam from the barrel rose in wisps, caught by the morning light.

"You were aiming a little down," Shepard said.

Roahn's third shot rang out less than five seconds later. The bottle was still intact, though.

"High," Shepard reported. "Slow down. Relax. You have all the time you need. You don't have to rush."

Roahn obeyed and took an extra ten seconds to devote to mentally preparing for her next shot. Although she found it odd that she seemed to waver a whole lot more with her target while it was directly underneath her sights. Almost like her strength was slowly being sapped the more she aimed.

Her next series of shots all missed but came close to her target, with some bullets even snapping off shards of rock as they came torturously close to impacting upon the bottle.

"Nearly there," Shepard assured Roahn. "Just move your finger. Keep your body completely still. Remember, all that needs to move is your finger."

Sighing, Roahn dropped her stance for a few seconds to gather her remaining strength. All this shooting had left her feeling drained, exhausted from concentrating so hard. Micro-trembles still jittered throughout her as the adrenaline in her system began to subside. She was on edge, but not exactly nervous.

Roahn had an idea of what she had to do.

Both arms lifting the pistol up, Roahn let the middle notch of the sights gently cover up the silhouette of the bottle, her eyes peering through the blinding reflection the light made on the sea. She took a deep breath, filling her lungs, and shut an eye, hearing the blood pumping in her ears.

She then willed her finger, and only her finger, to clench just a millimeter towards her.

The gun popped and bucked—Roahn was able to catch the recoil quite handedly by now.

But now the boulder was unoccupied.

The only evidence that anything had remained on top of it were brilliant little shards of glass, twinkling as the lapping waves brushed them. What they had formed before no longer existed. They were now purposeless, broken beyond repair.

Roahn had not even heard the bottle explode, for she had shut almost all her senses out at the time.

"I…" she stammered as she lowered the pistol, her thumb automatically flicking the safety on. "I… _did_ it."

"That you did," her father said behind her. She turned around to find his bearded face beaming back at her. "Very nice work."

A broad smile finally split Roahn's face and her eyes lidded upward in joy at the praise. Already she was giddy at having hit her mark on the first day out. The girl was nearly bouncing upon her toes, enthusiastic that she had smashed the goal she had set for herself.

Similarly, Shepard too was also quite excited for his daughter. She paid attention to instruction quite well, apparently. Less than thirty shots expended and already she had hit the mark. He knew that he should feel wrong for exhibiting pride for this kind of showing, but there was something within Roahn, a focused drive, that he knew all too well. She not only had skill within her, but the patience to utilize that skill effectively.

Then again, should he have expected anything less from his own daughter?

No… no, he reasoned. He was not going to push anything upon Roahn. A life of violence was not supposed to be the end result from Roahn's upbringing. If this was truly the sort of path that she wanted though, then how could he even hope to stop her? If she wanted this, then pushing back on her was merely an uphill battle.

Still, Shepard wished he could have held off this day just a little while longer.

 _She won't be a child forever, you know._

"Yes…" Shepard whispered so low that only he could hear his words. "But she'll always be my daughter."

Roahn had jogged out over to the boulder to inspect her handiwork, momentarily leaving Shepard alone. Pleased and over-the-moon that she had hit the bottle, she was practically skipping in place as she danced around the jagged glass fragments. She looked over at Shepard still kneeling in place—just in time for a thought to pop into her head. Running back over to the blanket, Roahn picked up three more empty bottles and hustled back to the boulder to place the bottles in a straight line. Shepard just watched his daughter run back and forth, wondering what she was doing until Roahn came over and grabbed the gun in an eager hand.

But she did not straighten up to fire at the new bottles this time around. Instead, she offered the grip to Shepard, eyes wide in anticipation.

"I want to watch you," Roahn said, noting Shepard's confusion.

Shepard then realized what she was talking about and politely laughed, shaking his head. "I haven't used a gun in years, Roahn."

"There's three shots left. I've already had my turn. I want _you_ to try."

She certainly was persistent—yet another remnant of Tali.

"I've probably lost a step or two," Shepard said, yet he took the offered gun anyway.

Roahn didn't seem to care. "Please, dad?" she just asked.

He could have tossed the gun down at the blanket and called it a day. That was certainly within his right as Roahn's father. There were probably at least half a dozen different ways to break it to Roahn gently that was not interested in this sort of thing.

And yet that would have been a lie.

Shepard stood up and stretched out his neck before he walked over to where Roahn had previously been standing to shoot. His big boots stamped out the outline of Roahn's smaller, three-toed feet in the sand. Shepard did not even need to look at the gun to prepare himself. By feel alone, he confirmed that the slide was closed, a clip still in it, that the safety was not depressed, and that the trigger had an actual carry to it. The relaxed posture of Shepard, the father, disappeared in an instant—hard edges tore at the corners of his eyes, his mouth firmed up in a straight line, and tendons in his arms tensed in preparation to take the brunt of the gun's blowback.

Roahn now realized she was looking at Shepard, the commander. A hint of the man, the hero, she had heard about all her life.

Just then, without warning, Shepard's arms snapped up and three shots rang out in quick succession, less than a second apart. _Boom! Boom! Boom!_ Roahn had to whip her head around just to catch the result of her father's shots. From where three bottles had been standing, they had all disappeared in three quick detonations, sending glass and dust spewing in the air in an explosion that was all too brief, all too sudden.

But to Roahn… it was calculated devastation.

The noises of the gun evaporated into the air, the lingering echoes swallowed up by the roar of the nearby waves. Nature consumed the violence, impartial to the paltry mechanisms.

Shepard's face only softened after he had made sure that the thermal clip had ejected itself from the barrel. He then holstered the pistol and began to wrap up the blanket—a silent declaration that their business here was concluded.

Roahn had to pick up her jaw as her father trundled over to her. Shepard had seemed so focused, so full of a determined drive, in that half-minute that he had been holding the gun. He had been _different_ then, almost scary. The man who now approached her did not have the same disposition. He was meek, almost timid, and carried a remorseful expression on his face. Roahn then realized that she had just seen a side of her father that he had not wanted her to know about. To her, it looked like Shepard was ashamed for destroying part of the illusion that he had set up for his daughter—another imperfection to add onto an imperfect man.

Shepard laid a hand upon Roahn's shoulder, the gesture affectionate, sending soothing feelings hurtling through Roahn.

Not a trace of the hardened commander left within that touch.

"Let's head home," Shepard said to Roahn as he mustered his best smile.

A smile… that hid a lie.

Heart in her throat, breath stolen from her, Roahn complied with nary a complaint.

* * *

Left to her own devices once she was back in her room, Roahn was scarcely believing that her entire morning had actually happened. Even a couple of hours after she had returned home she was still thrown by awe at her experience. Not because she had a bad time out there… but because she thought it went fantastically.

This huge grin on her face would not be going away anytime soon.

She had finally shot a gun and had hit something! Wow! This was all she had thought about for months on end and now, just like that, she had finally gotten to do it!

And her father had let her do it without repercussions. Who would've thought?

Roahn was not sure how to deal with this new insight into her father. It actually felt like he had been… paying attention to her. Not just because he had finally caved into letting her try out a gun, but that he had been providing her with careful instruction, bringing guidance to her form to make her become a better shooter. But all this newfound consideration upon her person did not feel like her father had suddenly caved in to her wishes, Roahn knew. If anything, Shepard had been using this as the perfect opportunity to drive respect into her mind.

Respect the gun. Respect her father. Respect it all and she will live a prosperous life.

 _Don't be like me_ , was the implicit lesson in the matter.

Still, Roahn hoped to try shooting again very soon.

 _It gets easy way too quickly._

There had been a great deal of strained emotion in her father's voice when he had uttered that line to her. Roahn had seen a great many sides to her father, but nothing like this grave and introspected version of her father before. There must have been a time when he was bolder, a bit more carefree. Back when he had a ship, a crew to be around.

What really happened to him during the war?

Which side of her father was the real Shepard? The careful father, or the brave commander?

Curious, Roahn grabbed at a nearby datapad and began scrolling through her digital library for clues. She opened up her mother's official biography and began to rapidly scan through the chapters, seeing if there was any additional insight that she might have missed, despite having read the book five times over already.

Tali's biography, concisely named _Tali'Zorah_ , had been published just six months before her passing. Tali, drawn to the idea of telling her story, had sought out a professional writer, a newspaper editor by the name of Avi Ben-Zvi, to give him the commission to put her life into words. The biography had been a massive hit when it had been released, with its first run selling over five million units on all digital storefronts. Reviews were considerably less glowing, though. Online reviewers generally praised the flowing prose of the writing overall but nearly all of them had made mention of the fact that the biography seemed to be deliberately skimping in detail in some areas—part of the reason why Roahn was only feeling frustration from not even being able to take her own mother's words as the truth.

 _Tali'Zorah_ , while being a best seller, would never escape the mediocre reception. People did enjoy reading about Tali's early life and how she eventually came to meet with Shepard and the crew of the _Normandy_ , there was still a general mystery about certain subjects that Tali seemed to gloss over entirely, subjects that mostly had to do with Tali's involvement in nearly every military campaign, but most grievously, Tali seemed to have skimped on the development of her relationship between her and Shepard, an aspect that general audiences would have assumed that the book would have given a great deal of attention toward. Even Roahn could figure out that the biography was disastrously limited in that area—to the casual reader, it would seem to them that Tali, an impressionable but capable young woman, shared one or two intimate conversations with Shepard during trying moments of their lives, and… _boom!_ Suddenly, they would be referred to throughout the book as being together. That would be all the audience would get to insinuate that a spark had flashed between the two. Tali would continue to speak of Shepard and herself as a couple until the end, using tried and tired platitudes that would serve to make many readers' eyes roll around in their heads. Useless, banal, and frustrating.

Were the reasons for this sparseness in the finished product the result of redactions on the manuscript that were imposed for privacy? Or were these deliberate omissions spurred from something beyond what Roahn could imagine?

As expected, Roahn blithely discarded her datapad after a few more minutes of fruitlessly combing through the chapters, proving her guess correct in that she could not find anything of note in her mother's own book. Not even Tali could tell Roahn just what had happened to make their family so strained.

"Mom," Roahn whispered as she blankly stared at the empty datapad that lay upon her bed. "Mom. I wanted more time."

But all that time was in the past, trapped in her memories.

" _You want to go where?" Tali asked as she turned in her chair to face her daughter._

" _To the mountains!" Roahn pointed out the window, gesturing frantically out the window of the living room, her finger indicating over to the winding path that led through the water-starved bushes up into the rocky canyons. "Can you come with me? Dad said I'm not supposed to leave the house without supervision. It'll be fun!"_

 _Tali gave a hidden smile as she appraised the girl, momentarily tapping a three-fingered hand upon her desk. "Exploring, is that it? Well, how can I say no to that?" Tali stood from her chair as she placed her hands on her hips. To Roahn, her mother now looked like a superhero. "Anything to get me out of the house. Spending time with you, my Ro, I couldn't imagine anything better."_

 _Despite having scant few opportunities in her life thus far to see her mother's face, Roahn thought Tali was the most beautiful person she had ever known. The meticulousness of how she kept her suit, every belt tightly clasped, every gracing piece of fabric drawn taut across her body, Tali had the uncanny ability to draw the gaze of everyone in the room, enviro-suit and all. Not only that, but Roahn thought the lush purple color of Tali's sehni and visor complimented her perfectly to create this powerful visage that encapsulated her mother._

 _Her confidence and pride. Her eagerness and selflessness. What more could she ask of a mother?_

" _Can dad come with us?" Roahn implored._

" _I don't know," Tali said. "Have you asked him?"_

 _Roahn hadn't, but she had been hoping that Tali would take care of that. However, it was quite obvious that Tali was leaving Roahn to her own devices on how to accomplish this, so Roahn took a breath and headed over to the office where she found her father hunched over a series of newscasts at his desk, various holograms of clustered stars and nebulas dancing around his head in a warm orange bath. She never understood what her father did for work, as it was all hopelessly esoteric to her. Not that her father ever tried to help her understand in the first place._

" _Hey, dad…" Roahn nervously began._

 _Shepard turned around, his face briefly frowning in annoyance at being disturbed at his desk, but he quickly warmed at the sight of his daughter. "Roahn! What's going on with you?"_

" _Mom… mom and I are going to do some hiking in the hills. Did you… did you…" Roahn had to force herself to draw breath. "…did you want to come with us?"_

 _The moment that Shepard's face fell gave Roahn her answer. She had to suppress herself from sighing out loud. Why did she even bother with him?_

" _I'm sorry, honey," Shepard replied uselessly, trying to provide comfort to a girl who had already sealed her emotions away. "I'm in the middle of something important right now. Maybe we can do the same thing tomorrow?"_

 _Did he really just say tomorrow? That was not going to happen. No, NOT tomorrow! Tomorrow was not going to work at all—she would not have bothered to ask him to join her on a walk if it was going to be for tomorrow!_

" _Okay, dad," Roahn just said through a choked throat before she left out the door._

 _At the very last moment before she exited the room, she paused mid-stride, waiting to see if her father would exhibit a last-second change of heart. But that was all a cliché, Roahn figured, especially when her father failed to break from whatever routine he had set himself up doing at this very moment, having turned back to his monitor to lock himself into… whatever he had been doing before. Stinging with disgust, Roahn microscopically shook her head before meeting her mother in the foyer._

 _To her credit, Tali said nothing about the fact that Shepard was not joining the two of them for their little outing together. But Roahn also did not catch Tali's worried look in the direction of her husband before dissolving her concerned aura in lieu for a more upbeat one, purely to please her daughter._

 _It was a fifteen minute walk from the house to the foothills, so Tali and Roahn had a lot of time to mindlessly chat, purely to keep things lively and also to distract Roahn from any lingering disappointment. Roahn walked close to her mother, staying in her shadow, admiring her confident gait and composure. Mother and daughter travelled together, peering through each other's visors to stare directly through them, to implicitly understand their deepest feelings, a kind of bond no one else but family could realize._

 _When Roahn began to lag behind, Tali slowed her pace down to allow her daughter to catch up. Even from here, Tali could hear Roahn's breathing through her mask._

" _Tired, dear?" Tali asked Roahn, amused at her daughter's drive._

 _Roahn shook her head and stubbornly strode past her mother. "No way."_

" _You sure? Because we can always take a break—"_

" _Not going to happen," Roahn said, but it was through a grin full of clenched teeth. "I'm going to walk until I've tired you out, mom!"_

 _Tali laughed, lifting her chin to the sky. "We're going to be walking for quite a while, then. Before you were born, you know, I once was able to hike twenty miles on rocky terrain without even stopping for water. While running at full tilt. With a heavy load strapped to my back."_

 _Roahn was certain she had heard incorrectly. "Twenty… miles?"_

" _Yep. Sometimes more. When I was working with your father, we had to be prepared for everything. He made sure that we were all getting in our calisthenics during our down time. Of course, everyone hated it, but it paid off in the end, I'd say."_

" _Keelah. How long did it take you to get used to that?" Roahn gaped. "I mean, how long did it take for you to be able twenty miles with no problems?"_

 _Tali looked upward in thought. "Hard to say. I never was keeping any track of time for that. But I had plenty of motivation that helped me get to that goal."_

" _What kind of motivation?"_

 _Her mother took a sly glance over her shoulder before nudging her head backwards. "The kind that's coming our way right now," Tali answered smugly._

 _Thoroughly baffled, it took a beat or two for Roahn to figure out what Tali was referring to exactly until she realized that her mother meant for it to be literal. Whirling in all directions until she spotted something approaching them upon the path they were on—more specifically, in the direction they had just come from. Roahn looked at the footprints she and Tali had made upon the cracked soil, through the rushes of dried and dying bushes, to the ever-growing humanoid form that was now breaking out into a run right for them. Roahn and Tali stood astride the path, Roahn looking on in confusion, not noticing that her mother was wearing a satisfied look within her eyes._

 _Soon Roahn's own eyes widened in understanding as Shepard slowed down to a fast walk when he got to ten meters away from them, barely even panting at the distance he had covered. Apologetically, he gave a nod in Tali's direction first before he wiped his brow and sheepishly grinned right at Roahn, giving the same piercing look that found her soul so easily, just like the ability her mother had._

" _Sorry I'm late," he said remorsefully. "I just realized that I had more important things to do than just work. I just wish I had figured that out sooner."_

 _Completely touched, Roahn smiled, but was saddened because she knew her father would probably never even know of this smile's existence._

 _The smile, though, stood to benefit the maker and not the receiver. A smile was not in vain if it had the required effect upon at least one person._

" _I'm glad you could join us, dad," Roahn said._

* * *

At the same time, back in his office, Shepard was concentrating on multiple things simultaneously as he began to wind down from the events of the morning. He could not stop thinking about the image of seeing his daughter confidentially holding a gun in her hands as she lined up shot after shot on the beach. As much as he wanted to decry his own involvement for enabling that to happen, he was more concerned at the fact that he was not feeling that way at all, but merely one solitary emotion from all that.

Pride.

The kid had natural talent. She listened well, and even seemed to immediately take the more philosophical aspects of his instruction to heart. Not to mention, if Roahn kept up her rate of learning, she could become an ace shot in no time. Even hotshot marines that Shepard had served with had taken longer to hit a target as small as a bottle from such a distance, and with a greater average amount of shots expended, too.

 _Now we'll just have to see what direction Roahn will take this_ , Shepard thought. _Will she exploit my leniency… or will she want to naturally progress in a mature fashion?_

"I just want you to be safe, Roahn," Shepard said to himself, to quell his raging thoughts. "That's all."

Shepard eventually managed to progress his stream of consciousness onto another topic as it wormed its way into his brain, and soon he was tapping dutifully at the hardlight keyboard upon his worn mahogany desk, propping his head up with his hands as his fingers burrowed up near his temples, giving him a very maudlin look. His eyes were fixated solely upon the holographic monitor of his own console, focused very hard upon a video clip that he had opened, having done so in a spur of the moment decision that had given him a brief glimpse of inspiration.

For there were bigger issues at hand than dealing with a sometimes capricious daughter.

The deteriorating nature of politics, for example. Shepard was slowly getting himself more absorbed into the climate brewing on Earth, a prime environment that, according to the rumor mill, was intent on reopening old wounds. Now was a good of a time as any to get himself reacquainted with his challengers.

The clip that Shepard had just opened was a recording from a public service broadcasting station, one of many channels transmitted across the galaxy for free in order to provide awareness in current events to citizens all over the galaxy. What Shepard was watching right now was a brief passage from his deposition back on Earth twelve years ago, when he had been forcibly shoved into a room filled to the brim with men and woman all harboring stern looks in his direction. Politicians with agendas. Not one of the people on the high bench had a penchant for simply doing the right thing. All they were concerned about were their careers and seizing any opportunity to make a name for themselves.

In all his years, Shepard had probably disliked about 95% of the politicians he had ever met. Their smiles were too fake, their relatability unattainable, and their policies were all concentrated upon the whims of their biggest donors instead of their constituents. They were just empty suits to Shepard, people all wearing a price tag upon their front. Hell, the only people who had ever held a public office that Shepard liked were all people who had spent time in the service beforehand. David Anderson, Primarch Victus, and even Admiral Raan were just among the lucky few he did not hold any animosity towards. At least _they_ understood the trials a soldier faced.

Not surprisingly, the man at the head of the bench in the clip, Raynor Larsen, had never so much had spent a single day of his life in the military. He probably could not even muster a proper salute, Shepard guessed as he continued to watch the deposition play out.

The time stamp and the bottom of the clip had indicated that Shepard's hearing had already gone over three hours. Three hours of being forced to listen to nothing but garbage from all these senators. From the camera angles, Shepard deduced that he had been putting on a good show: his face was blank in every scene, perfectly composed, while a bunch of the senators were visibly growing restless. Shepard knew that a small part of him had been secretly enjoying that moment back then, just watching his verbal opponents start to lose patience with Shepard's lack of reaction to their lines of questioning was quite pleasing to witness.

In the clip, Raynor Larsen leaned forward, his mouth furrowing into a fierce frown. " _Would you mind if I cut straight to the point, Commander?_ " He then grinned, showing perfect white teeth. More fakeness. " _That way, we can dispense with all the tiptoeing about that my colleagues have been doing today_."

" _You're the one asking the questions, not me_ ," Shepard responded in the video. Even though his tone was neutral, Shepard could definitely tell that, even through this holo-screen, his voice was laced heavily with disdain.

Eventually, it would all be made clear as to what a farce this entire deposition was.

Larsen seemed to ignore the biting remark. " _For three hours now, we've admittedly being lobbing softballs at you. Meaningless questions. The kind of stuff that we hoped would make you amenable to participating in what we're trying to accomplish here_."

" _So what are you trying to accomplish, Senator?_ " Shepard saw himself sneer.

" _A disclosure, Commander. Full and complete. The galaxy deserves to know the truth, after all._ "

Shepard saw his eyes on the screen narrow suspiciously. " _You and I have different opinions of what the truth entails, Senator. All I've been asked so far is to delve into specific recounts of the operations I carried out for the Alliance. Last I checked, that data is still classified. Unless I receive some sort of approval from my direct superiors, I cannot indicate to you any details of what I may or may not have done in these campaigns. Even you, Senator, have to have some respect for the very reason data is restricted in the first place._ "

" _But not if such information is in the public's best interest_."

" _What do you mean?_ "

" _What do I mean?_ " Larsen repeated, allowing his smile to curl even more upward before he swiped at his tablet on his desk. " _I mean that there are certain scenarios that preclude the declassification of sensitive information if it can be proven that said information is vital for dispersion. Now, I'm looking through the mission reports that you yourself have drafted during the war, only I'm unable to access the majority of the reports because they have been redacted. Redaction, Commander? Really? Withholding information from what was perhaps the greatest war the universe has ever seen? Are you really going to dictate that none of us in this room should ever be privy to the exact nature of how this war came to be? Palaven, Sur'Kesh, Thessia, Rannoch—a whole bevy of locales that you were present upon and yet there's nothing in there we can access. We can't connect the dots with the paltry information that we have. The Intelligence Committee wants answers to the nature of your findings, Commander. We want to set the record straight. We want to know what you were doing on these planets, your Spectre status be damned._ "

Shepard saw himself on the screen make a gesture to the man sitting directly on his left, his advocate—the best in the business. The lawyer then stood, smoothing his suit before he spoke. " _My client respectfully wishes to invoke his right to remain silent, Senator_."

It was rather rewarding to watch the effect of this statement take its toll upon Larsen. The craggly-faced man rubbed at the bridge of his nose tiredly, before scratching at his meticulously groomed beard, obviously struggling not to explode out loud.

" _Respectfully?_ " Larsen mocked dangerously. " _If your client was at all respectful, he would have been complying with this committee from the very start instead of dancing around the issues that he knows he's here to reveal!_ "

Larsen then levelled a finger directly at Shepard in the video, his broad frame shaking with anger. " _You've been invoking your right to remain silent on nearly every single question this committee has asked you, Commander. I won't have it! I warn you, if you carry this foolish charade out any further I will have no choice but to charge you with obstruction of justice. I could have you put in for contempt right now, if I wanted. All I want to do is to understand why. Why was it that Earth suffered the worst out of all the other Council races? Why was it that humanity's losses were exponentially larger than any of our allies? Why, despite your supposed best efforts, did it take six months for any help to arrive at Earth?_ "

The Shepard on the screen looked at his lawyer once again, who then stood and said, " _My client respectfully—_ "

" _Shut your mouth, counselor_ ," Larsen seethed, knowing that he had breached protocol from his little outburst. Indignant to the point where his face was starting to turn red, Larsen leaned forward and growled through his teeth. " _I know that there was a quid pro quo involved between you and the other foreign heads of state, Commander. I know that the other races would've been content to let Earth burn to save the skin of their own hides… unless you had no choice but to comply with their demands for assistance. You don't need to fall on your sword for them, Commander. They are the ones at fault, not you. If anything, you of all people should know that the Council failed us all. The Council, the one body designed to support the races upon it, turned tail on one of its members so that the other councilors could protect their own selfish interests. It means exactly what you think, Commander. Humanity's pursuit for a seat on the Council was all window-dressing. A sham! We got the seat, but not the voice to back up our will. It was a grand experiment that ended in a miserable failure. Help me—and humanity—bring justice to the ones who truly hurt us all. Help us—"_

Shepard shut the video down midway through Larsen's rambling mix of a plea and a threat. Shepard knew what had happened afterward and did not feel like reliving it, for that had been the moment where he, in the best demonstration of exercising his right to remain silent, simply walked out of the hearing, leaving a sputtering Larsen behind him. Hours upon hours of such accusatory questioning had caused Shepard to finally snap—severing his capacity to care after realizing what these politicians were after.

Control. It was always about control for these charlatans. Exerting their will upon whatever gaps in society they could squirm their way into. It was both devious and painfully obvious all at once. Especially with Larsen.

Larsen. Now he was a piece of work. Even back then, Shepard could see that Larsen was disguising his "concern" for the fate of the human race as a clever mask for his own political ambitions. Look tough interrogating the Savior of the Galaxy while heralding a new era of control for humanity all at once.

Larsen's plan would have succeeded too, had Shepard not walked out of there when he did.

All those questions… all that anger. Shepard could at least understand Larsen's behavior, but he could not understand why the questions were timed in such a manner, so soon after the war had ended. It made no sense to try and dig up any links that could implicate the other Council races, their own allies, unless there was some underlying motive that Shepard was unaware of. It made him fearful right down to his core. Exposing humanity's allies, selling them out. What kind of sense did that make? Why was Larsen so dead-set on making new enemies right after they were in the process of recovering from the worst galactic holocaust anyone had ever seen before?

Justice. What a joke. Larsen's "justice" now had Shepard completely exiled from his home planet. He had made good on his threat to slap Shepard with the contempt charge, effectively barring him from entering Alliance space. Was Larsen hoping that Shepard would come crawling back, begging to be let back on Earth in exchange for his entire knowledge of the war effort? If that had truly been his end goal, then Larsen had seriously miscalculated because Shepard was ambivalent about settling down on Earth anytime soon. Besides, he had made other promises to more important people that he wished to attend to first.

A certain wife, for example.

On whim, Shepard typed up the name of a news site on the extranet and began pulling headlines regarding what Raynor Larsen was up to these days. Ever since Hackett had alerted him that Larsen was becoming something of a nuisance, Shepard was starting to get a little worried as to what his old enemy was getting at in particular.

There was no shortage of sensationalist headlines that were tied to Larsen, just based off of this first page of scouring the extranet.

"LONDON: PARTY LEADER'S BILL PASSES – TURIAN WORKERS TO BE EXPELLED"

"PM DOES NOT VETO – LIMITATION ON EARTH VISAS IS ACCEPTED; LARSEN PRAISES HOUSE DECISION"

"LARSEN: 'HUMANITY MAY NEED TO CONSIDER PULLING OUT OF CITADEL COUNCIL'"

A dangerous man, Shepard admitted. After twelve years, Larsen had not lost his streak of throwing a rail into the gears of progress. Apparently Larsen's policies were based on a more isolationist stance – a clear antithesis from the stance Shepard had always taken. Embolden humanity at the cost of the other races. Very naïve… but very dangerous.

The evidence to Larsen's disguised racism was remarkably clear from page one: kicking out turian construction workers in exchange for human firms taking the rebuilding jobs, deliberately limiting worker visas to prevent outside competition, and going so far to suggest pulling out of the Citadel Council were firm indicators that Larsen was either out of his mind for introducing such insane policies or that he was wrapped up in some more sinister scandal as an agent for someone else's agenda. It would not be the first time that the latter scenario had happened in Shepard's lifetime.

But what was odd about all this was that Larsen was actually polling _well_ with his constituents. As in, he had enjoyed a steady approval rating all throughout his term as senator. Apparently people thought he did a good job as an attorney general and they thought he was doing an even better job as a senator, an aspect that thoroughly baffled Shepard. The most common form of praise that the citizens bestowed unto Larsen was that they believed he was doing the right thing by protecting jobs for humans instead of relying on aliens to accomplish work on Earth. To the constituents, Larsen was ensuring that there were jobs for humans on Earth by making them the first and only pool of workers to choose from. No wonder he was polling well—people were rebuilding their careers in the wake of the war and they could relax in the security of their job, not worrying that they would be outsourced at any second.

Larsen sure knew his audience, Shepard noted sourly.

"… _my goal right now, Christine, is to continue assisting in rebuilding our infrastructure_ ," an automated video of an interview with Larsen and a blonde-haired anchor suddenly began playing without warning. " _But to do that, I'm working with several of the union leaders and reaching out to colleagues across the aisle to make sure that our citizens get all the necessary rights they, as humans, should rightly be afforded in this matter. Make no mistake, I'm putting all my efforts into make sure that humans, and only humans right now, get a firm footing on the future. After all, we don't want to get a repeat of what happened last time when we foolishly trusted aliens to—"_

Shepard slammed a hand down on the keyboard, pausing the video and ridding Shepard of having to listen to Larsen's voice. The man had not appeared to have aged very much since Shepard had last seen him. Truthfully, Shepard had assumed he would never lay eyes on the man again. Larsen had that commanding presence, along with that maddening politician's smile, that Shepard deeply loathed and simultaneously feared. To Shepard, Larsen was just like any other politician—a faux representation of a man who was only pretending to exist.

Just then, an icon popped up in the right-hand corner of the screen. Someone was attempting to contact him, audio-only. The user's ID told Shepard that Admiral Hackett was calling again, but he was using a private ID instead of his public ID. Immediately, that made Shepard suspicious. In his old Alliance days, receiving a private call from a superior was usually a sign that Shepard was to receive orders behind someone's back. Now, it probably meant that Hackett was going to divulge information that would be otherwise sensitive using a public identifier.

Cracking his neck, Shepard took the call.

" _Shepard_ ," Hackett's voice uttered out of mid-air from his console. " _I hope things are not too late over where you are, but I've just received some troubling news that I didn't think it could wait_."

 _Add it to the pile_ , Shepard glumly thought. _This is as good of a time as any._

"What sort of news are we talking about, Admiral?" Shepard asked.

" _Nothing that bodes well, unfortunately. You remember me informing you a few days ago that the Judicial Intelligence Committee was pulling recently declassified documents that pertained to the operations you carried out during the war? Well, I've just been informed that the committee is ramping up its efforts for additional information_."

"The committee, eh? You mean Larsen."

What a coincidence.

Larsen. That man really _was_ becoming a thorn in his side. What was it going to take for Shepard to finally be rid of the man?

" _There's no doubt that the access requests came directly from Larsen, but it's not just operational write-ups that Larsen's looking up. He's looking at your jacket. Your service record, commendations, and your disciplinary history. There's no reason why anyone should be doing an in-depth research check unless Larsen is going to bring your file into the public spotlight, maybe even charge you with another warrant as a last-ditch effort to get your disposition on record_."

Hopelessly frustrated, Shepard leaned forward on the desk and rubbed at his eyes, positioning his mouth closer to the digital microphone.

"This is ridiculous. I won't give that bastard anything. I thought I made that clear the last time he had me on the stand. It's more of an annoyance for me and it's not helpful to Larsen at all. Hell, he can't touch me at all on Rannoch! We've already been over this!"

" _True_ ," Hackett's voice was grave, " _but the very fact that Larsen is going to continue with this legal process is an indication that he has something up his sleeve_. _Why would he go to so much trouble for something he should know is futile?_ "

"You think… he might resort to more illegal methods?"

" _At this point, it's very possible. I'm not unwilling to bet that Chimera might become involved in this, considering Larsen's shaky connection to the organization."_

"Larsen wouldn't dare use a PMC to bring me in."

" _Don't be so sure_ ," Hackett said. " _From the reports I've been reading, Chimera has been getting quite bold in their actions lately. Aside from practically escaping every single charge from their wanton and careless murder of civilians in conflict zones, the Salarian Union recently dispatched a communique to the top Alliance brass. So far, we've been keeping it from Larsen and his committee, but the report will leak to him sooner or later. Apparently one of their stealth cruisers went missing in the Horsehead Nebula. The salarians believe that Chimera was behind it_."

Shepard bumped his eyebrows. A salarian stealth frigate getting either boarded or destroyed was a rarity. The salarians were so cautious that the very probability of seizing one of their vessels should have been an impossibility, all things considered.

"Do they have any proof that Chimera was behind such an attack?" Shepard asked.

Hackett paused for a moment as he consolidated his notes on the other end of the line. " _Just bits and pieces are coming through the net right now. The salarians are assuring us that the frigate was not carrying anything particularly important, but they're obviously worried that, if it was Chimera, that this could spark an incident between our species_."

"Great," Shepard groused.

" _The salarians also gave mention of a certain Chimera operative in their brief transmissions as well—the one whom they think was directly responsible for the attack. Have you ever heard of the individual known as the Legionnaire?_ "

"I have, but I probably know just as much about the man as you do," Shepard admitted.

The Legionnaire was one of Chimera's many open secrets within and outside the organization. As Chimera was, in fact, a public company, they were required to keep a careful record of all their assets in order to remain open for trading in the stock market. Many of these assets made mention of an individual in the organization known as the Legionnaire—very few reports existed on the man, but it was rumored that the Legionnaire was a cybernetic individual who had been grievously wounded in battle and had his still-functioning organs put into a metallic shell. This shell served as a powerful combat chassis, at least two meters tall and as broad as a krogan, that came complete with several warfare capabilities which included enhanced strength, precision targeting, and the ability to extend weapons from hidden areas from behind thick armor plating. No pictures existed of the cyborg, but Chimera had never explicitly denied that they did not have a member known as the Legionnaire in their employ.

It was all black ops crap. The last time Shepard had fought enhanced cyborgs, they had been operating under Cerberus banners. The very fact that Chimera was experimenting with similar technology told him that they had learned nothing from the past and that these enhancements were only leading to a greater chance of disaster.

A heavy series of thumps at the front door abruptly dislodged Shepard from his train of thought with a sudden jump. Whirling around in his chair, Shepard inanely wondered who the hell would be knocking at his door right about now, his tired brain struggling to catch up.

" _Something wrong?_ " Hackett asked over the call.

"No, it's just… just that someone's at the door. Probably Raan coming over to visit Roahn or something."

" _I have to go as well, so I'll leave you to it. If I get anything definitive on whatever Larsen's doing, I'll be sure to call you immediately_."

"Appreciate it, Admiral," Shepard said as he tapped a key to close the call between them.

Muttering to himself after throwing on his jacket, Shepard padded barefoot over to the door, his mind abuzz with activity, already a tumultuous storm and the day was not even half over yet. Roahn, Larsen, and now this Chimera business. All Shepard wanted was to be left alone. Was that sort of goal really that hard to obtain?

Regardless, Shepard did not know it yet but his day was about to get a whole lot worse.

Shepard was feeling rather light-headed at this point and already he was thinking about his medication dosage for the day instead of the person who had come calling to his house right now. He was not terribly concerned at the moment, but was entertaining the notion that he should prepare for his medicinal injections as soon as possible to rid himself of the aching side effects that were beginning to creep up on him.

More aches and pains. Aging and old injuries was not a good combination to have. Shepard was still mentally grousing to himself right at the moment that he pressed the control for the door to open, allowing him to see his guest.

As the door hissed open, Shepard blinked as one of the tallest people he had ever seen seemed to block out the doorway, the orange rays of the sun scything around the form of the monstrous figure. Tiny metallic scraping noises murmured through a broad and powerful metallic chassis, ten powerful fingers clenching hard enough in this person's hands to grind bone into powder.

 _Oh hell…_ Shepard could only think, paralyzed in the doorway.

"Hello Commander," the Legionnaire uttered, his red-orange eyes blazing in a dry amusement, light curving around the shiny plating of the cyborg's shoulders. "Apologies for my sudden arrival, but I must insist on a moment of your time."

* * *

 **A/N: Of course I didn't want to portray that the relationship Shepard has with Roahn is not all negative - things are not all black and white between them, sort of like a very convoluted love. In any case, a stranger has now come calling. The plot is moving forward, as planned. As always, you have my appreciation for all the support this story is receiving. You are definitely making this writer very happy!  
**

 **Playlist:**

 **Beach Shooting (Family Theme I): "Budgie" by Hans Zimmer, Jasha Klebe, Bryce Jacobs, Mel Wesson, and Martin Tillman from the film _Rush_.**

 **A Hike (Family Theme II): "I Feel Responsible" by Hans Zimmer, Jasha Klebe, Bryce Jacobs, and Martin Tillman from the film _Rush (the Complete Score)_**


	6. Chapter 6: Deliverance

" _The next exhibit, Item B-2, that we're going to bring up now will be stills taken from the home page of Chimera Corporation's main extranet address. We've compiled two different pictures of the site taken at two different times – roughly eight months apart. The first image, dated just a few weeks ago, shows Chimera's slogan here: 'Earth's provider of training solutions and management.' Your typical boilerplate statement. Now, in the image dated eight months ago, we find Chimera's previous mission statement here: 'Humanity's security workers and threat eliminators.' As you can see, the language is a little more inflammatory this time around. What do you say to that, Mr. Koenig?"  
_ Sen. Jeunet, European Union (France)

" _What can I say, Senator? We had a marketing firm come by, Adolphus Inc., and they ran a promotional campaign two or three months ago in which they determined that the change in language was crucial not only to maintain our current customer base, but to attract a new pool of revenue by appearing less… aggressive, as you have insinuated."  
_ Erich Koenig, CEO – Chimera

[AUDIO DISTORTED FOR 5 SECONDS – MUTED GRUMBLINGS OCCUR IN BACKGROUND]

" _So… Mr. Koenig, was there a particular reason why you had Adolphus come to your firm to give the brand a makeover? Did there happen to be a particular incident that might have kicked that entire process off, in order to build up your company to seem friendlier to stockholders, or perhaps your board of directors?"  
_ Sen. Jeunet, European Union (France)

" _You're referring to the incident in Del Rio, I assume?"  
_ Erich Koenig, CEO – Chimera

" _The timing would seem coincidental otherwise. Del Rio, Texas. A simple checkpoint crossing where your troopers opened fire on a fleeing car, the hapless driver merely frightened by the presence of your contractors. The five civilians in the car were killed—sorry, murdered—three of them children. Was that when you personally made the call to Adolphus, after you learned of the incident?"_  
Sen. Jeunet, European Union (France)

" _No, ma'am. The call to Adolphus had been something we had planned out for months. It was just unfortunate timing that it had been made within the same timeframe of the checkpoint shooting."  
_ Erich Koenig, CEO – Chimera

[MORE GRUMBLING OCCURS]

* * *

Gargantuan.

Chilling.

Inhuman.

Such descriptors were running through Shepard's mind at a breakneck pace as he swallowed hard in the presence of the Legionnaire upon his doorstep. The evening light was casting a more hellish glow than normal, turning the surrounding desert blood-red. Surrounded by the throbbing color, the Legionnaire stood just a few steps away from Shepard's door, with his hands at his sides, his large slit eyes hazing a steady beam straight into Shepard's face.

The cyborg barely shifted his movement as he crept ever closer to Shepard, causing soft mechanical noises to be emitted. Shepard did not know what to do – should he run into the house? Lock everything down? He had not counted on anyone finding him here at all, so the appearance of a potential foe such as the Legionnaire was completely messing up his train of thought as how to proceed next.

 _How could I have been found?_

But the Legionnaire did not speak again just yet, adopting a position of amiable placation. Shepard's analytical mind noted that the cyborg did not appear to be armed. He could see no pistol strapped to the Legionnaire's waist, nor could he discern any rifles or assorted weaponry strung along his back.

Shepard was not stupid, though. He knew that the Legionnaire didn't need a gun to put up a good fight. Those thick, metallic arms on the machine could probably punch through several inches of Silaris armoring and not be any worse for the wear. Such was one of the advantages of trading the flesh for metal: it tends to wear out less quickly than any organic compound. Plus, it easily held the advantage when it came to knocking against bone. Realistically, Shepard glumly realized, was that if he tried to pick a hand-to-hand fight with this… _thing_ , he'd be torn apart in seconds.

Now the cyborg finally dipped his head in the barest sense of an acknowledgement, sensing that Shepard was still not going to engage in conversation just yet. "You know who I am, Shepard?"

"Yeah," Shepard muttered hoarsely with a vague nod. "I do. You're the Legionnaire."

The Legionnaire nodded once, his anticipation palpable. "You're aware of who I work for?"

"Chimera."

"Remarkably well informed, for a hermit," the Legionnaire's tone indicated that if he could be smiling, he would be right now. "A mistaken admission on your part. For someone hiding out in the edge in the galaxy, I would have expected you to have been behind on current events. Yet, you're _au fait_ on who I am and of Chimera. A little _too_ well informed… unless you never completely severed your connections to your past life. Who in the Alliance have you been speaking to, Shepard?"

Shepard clamped his mouth shut, fearful that he might already have screwed something up. The Legionnaire had run his trap almost immediately—a test to determine just how much he really knew about the precarious climate ongoing back on Earth. Already he had failed to conceal his position. Damn it. He ran his next words carefully through his head, making sure that there was nothing that he could possibly give away by speaking next.

"No one," he shook his head, but even he knew that this was unconvincing. "I haven't been talking to anyone."

The Legionnaire appeared to absorb this rapid denial sagely. "Ah, so it was Admiral Hackett, then," the cyborg deduced smugly, seeing right through Shepard immediately. "Don't look so shocked, Shepard. Who else would you feed you high-level information in the Alliance anyway? Not Colonel Alenko or Captain Vega, I would imagine. Esteemed individuals as they are, they don't have access to the sort of resources that Hackett would be able to relay to you. But if you thought you could keep that a secret from me, Shepard, I will give you just this one warning: it won't do you any good to underestimate me in the future."

Shepard was not sure what to make of the Legionnaire. The metal cyborg was a behemoth, intimidating to look at, and at least a good head taller than Shepard. Despite his massive stature, the Legionnaire spoke decisively and crisply, making sure that each word slashed Shepard's mental defenses right down to the bone. Now that he was even closer to the metal monster, Shepard could see that the front face plate, between all eight of the Legionnaire's oculi, was partially transparent, giving Shepard a clear line of sight to several bundles of wires all snaking around in the interior of the skull of the cyborg including a brief glimpse of a fleshy, red organ that lay just beyond a metallic partition.

The most unnerving aspect about the Legionnaire, though, was the way he spoke. The cyborg had quite an unusual voice. It was like two separate pitches were layered atop each other, much like the flanging effect present in turians, but it sounded like there was a very low, almost rumbling bass-y pitch that seemed to shake the very earth, coupled with a high-pitched sort of rasp that made up the acoustical foundation of the Legionnaire's voice. Shepard didn't know which particular pitch he should be listening to; it sounded like two different people were speaking all at once.

The Legionnaire tilted his head, as if he was scanning Shepard from head to toe. "You've definitely aged, Shepard," the odd voice uttered. "Twelve years will do that to a man. The beard, the grayness. But so rapidly? No matter, I already know what ails you."

Shepard tightened his mouth, not saying another word.

"You still carry that caliber of the man you once were," the Legionnaire pointed a thick metal finger delicately. "I can see it. Some habits just cannot be undone, can't they? But I want you to know that, whatever personal feelings you might have towards me, I believe that all individuals should hold some esteem for what you've done in the past. I certainly do."

"Why are you here?" Shepard asked roughly, steeling himself so that he would not look back over his shoulder, his thoughts immediately turning to the lone individual still inside.

 _Roahn. Whatever happens, I have to protect Roahn._

The cyborg shrugged, nonchalant. "Our duties sometimes take us to places where we would not want to be otherwise. But you already know this. Just as you already know why I am here and what I want."

"I have no _idea_ of what you want." Shepard held onto his distrust, never losing sight of it for a second. "Get out," he let the empty threat ring. "Go back to whomever sent you. I am not a threat to anyone. I don't care what someone might want with me. I am here because I wanted to be alone. That's all."

"Shepard, Shepard," the Legionnaire chuckled. "You of all people should know that no one is truly alone. Not in this galaxy. There is nowhere that you can run from to hide from the inevitable. As the proof I hold here indicates…"

The Legionnaire spread his hand and a square holographic interface extended across his palm, hovering just over an inch above his hand. The metal arm tensed and extended in a smooth motion, "tossing" the hologram over to Shepard. Shepard's own omni-tool display detected the incoming file and "caught" the message, causing it to display on Shepard's tool without him even lifting a finger.

 _United Systems Alliance Supreme Court_ , the heading of the document blared out in Old English text font.

 _United Systems Alliance v. Jonathan Shepard, Cmdr_., Shepard silently continued to read. _You are summoned to appear before the United Systems Alliance Supreme Court at the time, date, and place set forth below to answer to one or more offenses or violations based on the following document filed with the court._

Apparently an indictment had been filed back on Earth under his name, Shepard discovered as he continued to read. There was no record of who had been the individual who had provided the initial filing, but Shepard had a strong feeling as to which person it was.

"Larsen's getting rather desperate, is he?" Shepard just said as he disengaged the court document. "This is just another distraction meant to rile up his polling numbers."

"Nonetheless," the Legionnaire said, "it symbolizes more than you could imagine. Whoever has a grievance towards you is not my concern. What is my concern is the task of transporting you back to Alliance space, whereupon you will be arrested and summarily forced to appear in court if you end up refusing this offer today."

The Legionnaire had spouted all this off in a brisk and clipped manner, but it took a few seconds for Shepard to respond because the significance of it all had hit him in the face with the force of a brick wall.

"What…" he uttered, "…the hell… did you just say?"

The cyborg held out his hand again and another holographic document appeared in mid-air for the both of them to look at. "It's a simple process, Shepard," the Legionnaire said conversationally. "What I have here is the warrant that Senator Raynor Larsen imposed on you twelve years ago, on the day you abruptly left his hearing back on Earth. It still has not been rescinded. Not only have you been cited for contempt, but now also for treason, bumping you near the top of the Alliance's most wanted list."

Feeling dizzy, Shepard wiped his brow as his vision momentarily began to blur. _Good god_ , Shepard thought. Contempt. Treason. Words he knew should never have been associated to his name. For more than a decade, he had thought if he had left well enough alone, the ambitions of his enemies would die out, starved of the precious fuel they needed. But in his absence, they had not been extinguished… they had flourished.

"However, I have been instructed to inform you that all of this has the potential to be eradicated in a matter of moments," the Legionnaire continued. "That is, _if_ you come quietly with me today, without fuss, and turn yourself into the nearest Alliance outpost, the warrants in your name will be dissolved and you will have a clean record. No longer will you need to worry about being pursued any longer."

Gathering his strength, Shepard took a large enough breath for him to be able to speak.

" _If_ I go quietly."

Sensing a shift in the air, there was a whirring noise as the Legionnaire's chassis slowly tensed. " _If_ , Shepard. If."

"You can't even touch me," Shepard found himself starting to hyperventilate, a prickling sensation at the back of his neck beginning to irritate him. "There is no way that you can drag me off this planet legally. You need me to cooperate. If I refuse, you have nothing."

"You are technically correct. I am not _supposed_ to be able to arrest you on Rannoch, which is foreign soil, but you and I both know that the law can be bent by the stronger force that leans on it."

"You wouldn't dare."

"I just might. I _was_ tasked with bringing you in. If you truly know who I am, then you should be aware I have a habit of never leaving a job incomplete. I have been given the full authority by the same body that issued your summons to utilize the entire force at my disposal to arrest you. I was brought on board specifically to make sure that you provide your testimony to the right committee. After all, you _are_ the felon among us when you fled the Alliance to escape your subpoena."

Shepard gave a wry smile. "Better than being a gun-for-hire for some power-crazed moron."

The Legionnaire laughed, the odd tones of his voice emitting quite an ugly sound. "We all start somewhere, Shepard."

"Please," Shepard snorted. "I'm fully aware of whom is really pulling your strings. You were only sent to fetch me because of some back-room political decision made when you were nowhere near the room. If you manage to succeed, and if somehow, my testimony to Larsen does manage to get on the record, you're still going to have to make me publicly reject the notion that I was compelled to cooperate under duress."

"That's not my responsibility," the cyborg said stiffly. "Nor is it any of my concern."

"Of course. Why wouldn't it? All I'm going to be doing is handing Larsen his smoking gun on a silver platter. He wants me to testify so he can appeal to his base and enact himself as the senator who was tough on any other species that isn't human. Larsen thinks that what I have will manage to swing a significant portion of public opinion against aliens so severely that it might just be able to pave the way for humanity to reign as the dominant species in the galaxy on the political side. He wants me to paint our allies—the salarians, asari, turians, and everyone else—in a bad light for his political gain, something that I will never do. If he gets that, he might just make a good case for him moving up to be humanity's new councilor—or perhaps, the new prime minister. Have I gotten that right?"

"Wouldn't know," the Legionnaire shrugged carelessly. "The politics behind your arrest are not in my interest. But you think that _I'm_ the one you need to appeal to. You are mistaken. I am merely the courier. Are you ready to cease your charade? Will you continue to embark in this pathetic defense of your already besmirched character, Shepard?"

Shepard backed up a step, his foot gliding over the smooth and dusty rocks of the porch. "Perhaps I will."

"Then you will only make life more difficult for yourself."

"Am I really to believe that you're doing this because you were ordered to?"

"I am not programmed, if that's what you're thinking," the Legionnaire snapped back, the first real sign of anger Shepard had seen from the cyborg. Shepard then realized that he might be biting off more than he could chew if he managed to anger the Legionnaire beyond reason. "I have my own motivation for seeing this through to the end."

Breath lodging in his lungs, Shepard asked, "Want to clue me in on what that might be?"

The Legionnaire's fingers clenched into fists tight enough to shatter rock.

"Simple," the cyborg breathed. "You're the last obstacle in my way." The Legionnaire then took a single, decisive step towards Shepard, who noted that the metal foot that stepped down onto the stone of his porch was causing thick cracks to spiderweb slowly from where his weight was pressing down.

"That all? This isn't all because you have some vendetta against me, is it? Have I done something against you to make you hate me? I've had to deal with too many of those cases as it is."

"Shepard, my being here is not borne out of a petty grudge. As far as you're concerned, you haven't done anything to make me despise you in particular. But the fact remains that you have either the option to surrender or flee. I've seen fit to provide some additional incentives to make sure that the latter doesn't occur, if you will observe."

A twinkle of a stuttering red beam flickered into Shepard's eyes as the Legionnaire spoke and he instinctively threw up a hand to protect himself. The notion that something far more sinister was afoot threw him for a second and, almost tentatively, Shepard oriented his hand so that he could see the innocently wavering red dot projected perfectly upon the back of his limb.

Laser sight.

Gunmen.

From beyond the Legionnaire's shoulder, Shepard could see movement in the hills above him. Red and black armored troopers were knelt down amongst the rocks, partially obscured by the dry bushes. Spotters and snipers. All aimed in his direction. Shepard looked down at his chest to find two more dots carefully projected there—warnings for him to get in line. From where he stood, Shepard could make out five… maybe six troopers in total waiting for him, their guns focused in a tight cone of fire so that he would obey the Legionnaire's demands or risk being put down.

"Backup?" Shepard asked, still looking at the Chimera troops beyond.

"Call it motivation," the Legionnaire said. "They haven't been ordered to kill on sight, merely to wound. It wouldn't do to put down someone of your stature, Shepard. But individuals do tend to capitulate at a greater rate when you bring the threat of pain into the equation."

Shepard huffed in derision. "Then your troopers will have quite the time on their hands trying to get me to crack. I've faced so much pain that they will never be able to replicate such sensations."

The cyborg silently absorbed this, his impassive face seemingly stiffening in irritation.

"If you don't comply," the Legionnaire warned, "you will be running for the rest of your life, Shepard."

Surprising even himself, Shepard matched the Legionnaire's gesture, closing the gap by another step.

"I've run this far. I can run a little more."

But then he heard the door creak open behind him.

 _Dear god…_ he thought. _No… what are you doing?!_

"Dad?" he heard Roahn's voice pipe up behind him.

Mournfully, Shepard took a slow blink and agonizingly turned his head to find his daughter half-concealed in the doorway. She looked surprised and torn to find her father staring up at a metallic monstrosity several times her size, but she apparently had not been unable to stifle her curiosity when she had heard the raised voices coming from the front of the house. Roahn caught the terrified look in Shepard's eyes and immediately she understood the inherent danger, beginning to tremble as she slowly edged back into the house.

"' _Dad?_ '" the Legionnaire mocked, the dual tones of his voice sliding over each other in glee. "No one said anything about _this_ sort of development."

"Roahn," Shepard urged, wide-eyed, "get back in the house right now!"

The girl froze, wavering under the frantic stare of her father and the malevolent look the Legionnaire gave her that seemed to burrow deep into her skull.

"So…" the Legionnaire whispered, "you have your weakness after all, Shepard."

Shepard's blood came to a boil immediately. Muscles all throughout his body jolted and tensed in nanoseconds. Endorphins flooded his brain as one of the most primal of all human instincts latched onto his psyche. His lungs froze, making him nearly unable to breathe. Time seemed to creep down to a crawl—a result of a massive amount of adrenaline being dumped into his bloodstream. All moisture in his mouth vanished and a rage… a violent, untamable rage began to burgeon in his abdomen, steadily rising up through his chest to reach his head, filling his thoughts with madness and carnage.

A fearsome predator, unleashed within him. The patriarchal instinct to protect one's young, now on display.

All because Shepard was a father. A father who had vowed to protect his daughter.

To even think that someone would threaten to lay their hands on his child…

Everything then exploded in an instant.

Shepard screamed an uncontrollable utterance of the most blinding anger he had ever felt within him at the very same time he threw out his arm, activating his omni-tool to form a protective glove around his hand. The Legionnaire, despite his augmentations, was too slow to realize what was happening until the reactive barrier that Shepard had activated in a hemisphere-shape, protruding from the human's hand, touched the cyborg's metal chest. There was a flash and a muted thump—the Legionnaire was propelled backwards as the haptic detonation from the omni-tool projected nearly a kiloton of force onto him, sending the Legionnaire flying end over end to land upon the dirt several meters away from the house.

The Legionnaire coughed as he righted himself, using his hands to slowly push himself up. There was only a tiny scratch upon the cyborg's chestplate—the only damage that the miniaturized explosion had performed.

"As you wish, Shepard," the Legionnaire grimly stated as he watched his quarry pluck up his daughter and flee through the door, slamming it shut and locking it behind them.

Crackling sounds from the hills barked amongst the landscape—the Chimera snipers were laying down fire to little effect. Their bullets merely smacked into the front of the house but did not penetrate, creating a layer of sparks and harsh pings as the abode itself remained impassive.

To Shepard and Roahn, though, the noise from outside sounded like the end of the world. The very impact of the bullets sent micro-reverberations through the air, shaking their bones and rattling their heads. A wide-eyed Shepard, his omni-tool now deactivated, ran like hell through the house, Roahn clutched tightly in his arms, as he headed over to the fireplace in the corner of the living room. Shepard reached around the corner where the fireplace met the wall and flipped a hidden switch, causing the hearth to break open in two with a grinding noise, revealing a ladder that led down into a soupy black pit.

"Get down there, Roahn!" Shepard frantically ordered his daughter as he physically pushed her over to the ladder. "Do not come out for whatever reason!"

Roahn's feet found the first rung and she automatically began to lower herself down the ladder until a brief stream of consciousness found her. "You're coming too, dad?!"

"I'll be right behind you!" Shepard said after a brief pause. "Now go!"

There was not any more time for Roahn to argue. The girl gave a fearful whimper before she closed her eyes and led herself further down the ladder by feel alone. Shepard watched his daughter climb her way down before, through a tight face, he reached up and flicked the hidden switch a second time.

"But I have to protect you first," he said quietly.

Shepard nearly gave a mournful gasp as he heard his daughter scream in helplessness and betrayal as she watched the passageway close above them, separating the two behind a barrier of solid rock.

" _Dad!_ " was her final word before the hearth shut itself closed, leaving her all alone.

" _What are you doing, John?_ " Shepard asked himself as he was beholden only to an empty fireplace now.

There was a smashing sound of metal being torn apart and Shepard whirled his head around to witness the Legionnaire bursting through the front door like it was made of paper, sending bits of metal and glass spilling over the floor as dust from an outside breeze billowed in.

"Yes, Shepard…" the Legionnaire uttered as he marched through the broken foyer. "What _are_ you doing?"

Growling and wild-eyed, Shepard shot to his feet and raced over to where the Legionnaire was confidentially striding his way. Shepard engaged the haptic detonators on both of his hands and rushed the cyborg, his fists glowing with warm energy. With a furious roar, Shepard made a flying leap toward the Legionnaire, his fingers clenched to send another powerfully directed explosion his foe's way.

The blow never landed. Not completely.

Instead, the Legionnaire, his eight oculi tracking Shepard's every movement, calculated his own counterattack and raised his hands wide, catching Shepard's fists perfectly in his larger grip. The haptic detonators slammed against the cyborg's palms and exploded, but the Legionnaire dug his heels into the polished granite floor and tightened his grip, locking him in place. Smoke rose from the useless detonations and the Legionnaire's heels left deep scratches in the rock floor as Shepard hopelessly looked upward towards his enemy.

The Legionnaire gave a triumphant hiss. "I touched a nerve back there, didn't I?"

His hands still locked in place, Shepard roared through clenched teeth, "I'll turn you into scrap for that!"

"You don't have the strength for that anymore!" the Legionnaire retorted with a laugh.

The beastly automation then raised a leg and slammed it powerfully into Shepard's sternum, simultaneously letting go of Shepard's hands, causing him to sail through the air. Shepard landed heavily on a plush couch, which cracked in half under the strain of taking the full weight of a two-hundred pound human. Part of the halved couch got pushed back so far from the sheer force that it slammed into the deck window, which was made of glass, shattering it and sending cold Rannochian sea air blowing into the house.

As Shepard struggled to brush broken glass off of him, wincing as he realized he probably had bruised a couple of ribs, the shockwaves from the Legionnaire's footsteps heralded a towering arrival. Standing over the fallen human, the cyborg looked more titan-like than ever.

"You're no longer in your prime, Shepard," the Legionnaire taunted. "Twelve years without a war brings out the atrophy."

Spitting out blood, Shepard grimaced as he jumped to his feet, trying as best as he could to ignore the sudden pain in his joints. His fists raised in a defensive posture, Shepard stutter-stepped as he approached the Legionnaire, who was now standing completely still, almost tree-like. He tried to activate his haptic detonator program again, but his omni-tool was malfunctioning. The hemisphere discs of contact explosives were stuttering in and out of existence around his hands. Shepard had a quick moment of panic—his omni-tool was the only device he had at his disposal that could even give him a hope of surviving this day!

And now they were broken.

Regardless, Shepard swung a fist, but the Legionnaire lazily deflected the blow with a smooth motion, sending Shepard's arm in an entirely different direction. Infuriated, Shepard jabbed with his other fist, impressively fast, but the Legionnaire chopped an arm down and deflected that blow too.

It was hopeless. The Legionnaire was unlike any foe Shepard had ever faced. The cyborg had an entire cruiser's worth of combat suites locked inside his central cranium—software that specifically monitored and dictated every single offensive and defensive action ever thought up in all of existence. Long range shooting, close range combat, and every form of martial arts, the Legionnaire had them all at his disposal. He could even ramp up his attacks to seven strikes a second, if he warmed up the motors in his limbs well enough beforehand.

But faced with an older and considerably less powerful opponent like Shepard, despite his experience, the Legionnaire was barely having to push himself to his greatest limits.

Shepard took another hefty roundhouse swing at the cyborg, right at the moment his omni-tool decided to briefly fail upon him. Bare knuckles smashed directly into the thick metal of the Legionnaire's chest—the cyborg had not even made a move to deflect the blow this time. Shepard roared in pain as he clutched his ruined hand—at least a couple broken fingers, and they were already bleeding like a stuck pig.

The front of the Legionnaire's chassis was now blotched with Shepard's blood, a dirty red smear that marred a matte gray landscape, and yet the cyborg stood by, waiting for Shepard to tire himself out. Enraged by the Legionnaire's apparent nonchalance, Shepard reached out with his good hand and groped for the nearest object within reach: a vase, one that Tali had made years ago, Shepard realized too late with a pang.

As Shepard whirled his arm through the air, creating a flat blur, he hurled the vase with all his strength right at the Legionnaire's head. His foe did not even bother throwing up an arm to block it, as the Legionnaire simply let the vase impact upon the front of his skull-like head, emerging unscathed as the ceramic construction dissolved in a fractious mist around him, sending spiraling coats of dust crumpling to the ground as the remains of the vase tumbled at his feet.

"Lasts acts of a desperate man," the Legionnaire said conversationally as he brushed sheets of dust from his shoulder in a subtle taunt, his metallic fingers making a horrendous screeching noise as they rubbed against the metal of his collar. "But I would be remiss if I truly expected _the_ Commander Shepard to surrender without a fight."

"You're right about that," Shepard seethed as he stumbled to his feet once more, fists raised and ready to slam them into the core of the Legionnaire.

The hulking foe sidestepped Shepard's next wild swings, moving so fast it was as if he was made of air itself. Shepard stumbled as his fists met an empty void, his balance thrown off to the point where it was becoming a hindrance. Taking advantage of Shepard's state of mind, the Legionnaire reached out his clawed hands and clasped them firmly around Shepard's wrists.

Shepard tried to pull back in a moment of panic, but he was trapped in the Legionnaire's grip.

"How far you have fallen, Shepard."

"If you're going to fight me, then fight me," Shepard spat. "Otherwise, shut up."

"Fool. If I was seeking to kill you, I would have done it by now."

Not giving Shepard a moment to answer, the Legionnaire squeezed his right hand and gave a firm yank, pulling Shepard's omni-tool off of his body. The orange holographic shapes around Shepard's arms fluttered and died without as much as a whimper. There was a crunching noise as the Legionnaire squeezed the tool. Electric bolts fluttered between the cyborg's clenched fingers as the tool disintegrated under his pulverizing grip.

"Oh crap," Shepard said as he looked at his bare arm.

A rumbling noise emitted from the Legionnaire in what seemed like a perverse mutilation of a laugh, a mere second before the cyborg unexpectedly shot his head forward, slamming the pointed tip of his helmet smack dab in the center of Shepard's forehead.

A blistering pain erupted in Shepard's skull. He felt hot blood begin to drip down his face. His vision churned and melted. Stars seared his eyes.

The Legionnaire now looked a fright with Shepard's blood painting his own faceplate. A splash of crimson splattered across his orange-yellow eyes.

As Shepard reeled, the Legionnaire gave another unintelligible noise before he, now clutching onto the front of Shepard's shirt, lazily swung his arm up and over, taking the human with the movement. Shepard was hurtled through the air and over the kitchen counter, careening into stored utensils and picture frames, sending them clattering to the ground only for him to join them as he finished tumbling off the stone counter. A jar smashed next to Shepard's hand as he blinked while lying stunned upon the ground, slicing at him and causing the skin of his palm to begin bleeding all over the floor in earnest.

Peering over the counter, the Legionnaire's immovable expression oddly seemed to have the sort of bemused quality that would indicate only a slight level of irritation present.

"Enough playing around, Shepard," the Legionnaire sighed. "You're only going to continue to get hurt unless you stop this nonsense."

Blinking blood out of his eyes, Shepard shakily got to his feet, pressing his hands onto the glass-coated floor, spreading blotchy red handprints everywhere.

"Foolishness?" Shepard just breathed before his eyes flickered over to the counter, next to the stove, where a rack of kitchen knives lay. The Legionnaire followed Shepard's gaze with his own, the blazing orange glow absorbing all of the information but choosing instead to stand idly by in bemusement.

With a savage roar, Shepard reached over and plucked a long carving knife from the rack. Wheeling around the corner of the kitchen, Shepard positioned the knife in his hand in a stabbing thrust and speared it straight towards the Legionnaire's chest. The Legionnaire very well could have evaded the blow, but deliberately chose not to, his unblinking "eyes" merely focused on the onrushing point of Shepard's blade.

The reasoning for this apparent laziness in the Legionnaire was made all the more clear in the next second, when Shepard's body rebounded off of the cyborg's frame with a loud _whump_ , his arms jerking as the knife seemingly plunged into his enemy's chest. Shepard backpedaled, his arms and shoulders now smarting, bruised from his heavy collision.

The Legionnaire just looked at Shepard for a single second before he glanced downward at the knife protruding from his chest. The carving knife, although it had made contact, had only embedded a centimeter into the Legionnaire's chestplate. A pathetic effort—no damage done whatsoever. The only reason it had stuck into the Legionnaire in the first place was because Shepard had miraculously aimed his blow into one of the cracks between the shifting plates in the Legionnaire's chest.

Looking at Shepard again, the Legionnaire gave a disappointed huff. "I wonder if you really expected that to work," the cyborg shook his head before he easily wrenched the knife out from where it had stuck, discarding it to the side with a careless clatter.

The gigantic armored behemoth then tucked his shoulder down before whirling about in a wide-armed strike that caught Shepard perfectly in the middle. Shepard gave a hoarse cough as the wind left his lungs and he again found himself flying through the air, having enough time during his weightless jaunt to have the weird and obtuse thought about… Roahn.

His back then hit the ground.

Groaning and rolling around in pain, Shepard could feel the vibrations in the floor as the Legionnaire stomped his way. He tried to get himself back on his feet, but he lacked the strength to do so. Spittle ran down his bearded chin, frothing in his hair, as he desperately clawed for purchase.

"Got to…" he moaned as he futilely sild over the polished stone. "I have to…"

Whatever Shepard meant by his blathering never became sound because he trailed off as the Legionnaire slowly circled Shepard, now putting himself between his prey and the main door. Confident that it was only a matter of time before Shepard gave in, the Legionnaire backed up a step, facing away from the doorway, giving Shepard enough room to decide where his fate lay next: if he truly wanted to dig his own grave by continuing to fight, or by accepting the inevitable and surrendering himself into the Legionnaire's custody.

"I was told that you would be determined and adamant," the Legionnaire said. "But I never thought you'd be deluded."

"What can I say?" Shepard mustered a smile after spitting a wad of blood and mucus on the floor. "I come with the whole package."

"Time certainly has done you no favors. Look at you, all broken down. There's barely any of your fight left."

"Give me a minute to stand back up and I'll prove you wrong."

The Legionnaire could only stare at Shepard until he finally lost his patience and withdrew a pair of omni-cuffs from where they had been strapped upon his back. The cuffs glowed orange, the same color as Rannoch's sun, and the edges brimmed with a vibrant energy.

"This has gone on far enough, Shepard. I've entertained your fantasy for longer than necessary, but your glory days are far in the past. Besides, did you really think that this could possibly end any differently?"

"As a matter of fact…" Shepard mustered as he used his arm to push himself up halfway, now fumbling for something in his pocket, "… _yes_. I did."

Only then did the Legionnaire notice the tiny remote Shepard was holding in his hand.

There was a tiny _beep_ as Shepard's thumb depressed the singular button.

Radio waves hurtled across the air in less than the precise amount of time it took for a human eye to blink. Even the Legionnaire would be unable to react in time to the unseen energy waves rippling through the air and all matter. The frequency set out by the remote was keyed to a specific transmitter, one that would begin the exact reaction intended once the radio waves unceremoniously smashed into the receiver.

And smash into the receiver they did.

More electrical signals trickled through wires nanometers wide as miniature transceivers furrowed the commands through an interlocking grid—a highway for all energy and intent. The signal, having reached its intended source, flowed all throughout the foyer, near the entrance, into a serrated net: a tangled web of microfilaments made out of K-EX, a high-grade construction detonating substance. K-EX, a low-volume, highly combustible material meant for demolition crews, was a turian creation that was very tightly controlled in the intended sectors. Even a small amount of K-EX would be sufficient enough to disintegrate a thousand-ton boulder and turn it into gravel.

In larger doses, it was devastating.

The K-EX in the weaponized filaments all fizzled and fired at the exact same time while duristeel wedges directed the explosion outwards, towards the front door. Anyone standing to within five meters of the door had a guaranteed shot of being in the direct blast zone while anything outside of that zone of influence had ample protection from serious injury.

Unfortunately for the Legionnaire, he happened to be directly inside the blast zone.

The Legionnaire looked upwards just in time to have an entire wall of fire burst from all around him, surrounding and shaping to his body, a flood of invisible pressure hugging at his frame. The resulting noise was louder than a bolt of lightning striking at its landing point—enough to blow out the ears of the Legionnaire, if he had any.

The booby trapped foyer had not finished in performing its deadly work. With temperatures in the front hall spiking up to 600 degrees Kelvin, the focused column of flame and noise lifted the Legionnaire off his feet in the half-second since the explosion began. The Legionnaire, too overwhelmed to react, was quickly spat out of Shepard's home in a heated fury, flames licking and blackening his chasses. The cyborg was hurtled through the front door, the shards of broken glass melting in the explosion's wake, and deposited a dozen meters outside into the dying evening on Rannoch.

Lying on his back in the dust, the Legionnaire now realized that he was looking at the starry night sky, fully separated from Shepard.

" _Fuck_ ," he murmured out loud.

* * *

Shepard himself started to cough up a lung as black smoke began to pour into his house. Through tear-streaked eyes, he could see that the front door was in shambles, completely gone, a mesmerizing barrier of flames having replaced it. He could not see where the Legionnaire had been propelled to. Shepard only knew that he had just this one chance to escape.

But he would do it right this time.

It was no small effort for Shepard to stand up on his own volition. It took a few tries with him stumbling about, but once he had fully risen, he would never fall back down again.

The trap set at the front of the house had worked perfectly. Truth be told, Shepard was impressed that it had performed its function exactly as intended. While he knew the Legionnaire would not be killed by such an explosion, it had effectively separated them long enough for Shepard to make his move.

Clutching at his ribs, Shepard limped through the house as the flames from the front door began to spread along the floor and the walls, the fire now moving and flowing like a thick liquid, streaming almost lazily as it devoured its fuel with a ravenous hunger. He was bleeding from his mouth and from cuts all over his body, but he ignored the pain and discomfort as best as he could.

Shepard stumbled into the kitchen and frantically ransacked one of the cupboards, throwing out bunches of silverware and assorted glasses, before he finally managed to locate the Predator pistol he had stowed since this morning. But that was not the only thing Shepard was searching for.

Fortunately, he knew exactly where he had stored the other item.

Rushing as fast as he could to his bedroom before it could be burned to a crisp, Shepard knelt down by his dresser and opened the bottommost drawer. There was a hidden bottom within that drawer that lifted away when Shepard tugged on it. Inside was a thin, unmarked package. Grabbing a knapsack, Shepard quickly thrust the package into it, along with the pistol, before he set back off towards the living room.

Shepard fumbled for the hidden release to the ladder that he had sent his daughter down and once the path was revealed to him, he wasted no time in gingerly lowering himself down it. Before the fake fireplace could be automatically slid over his head, Shepard took one final look at his home that was now being consumed by fire. He could see through the destruction, though, as he realized that he was leaving the place where he had expected to settle down forever. He had built this house, designed it from the ground up, for his wife. He had tried to raise a daughter here.

But in mere moments, it would all be gone. Ashes. A distant memory.

With a heavy heart, Shepard looked away and continued on his path downward, soon to have a blanket of darkness swallow him up.

* * *

Meanwhile, the Legionnaire was fuming right outside the house, standing still as a statue while he watched the abode burn to the ground.

Smoke rose in faint wisps from where the inferno had been the most intense, but on the whole the Legionnaire was uninjured, perfectly functional. However, he was frustrated beyond belief, emphasized by the fact that he felt that he had been particularly sloppy for letting Shepard get away. He had humored the man too much, fallen into a rhythm of enjoyment that had proved to be his undoing when Shepard had unleased his little trick upon him. That would reflect badly on his performance, the Legionnaire huffed.

A sharp sound of glass exploding temporarily drew the Legionnaire's attention. One of the windows of the house had shattered from the intense heat. The fire was now streaming outside in long ribbons of light, sending a gigantic smoke cloud rising into the air. The Legionnaire was debating storming what remained of the house in an attempt to relocate Shepard, but he had a sinking feeling that Shepard was probably long gone. The man was too crafty and too proud to die in such an ignominious fashion. A house fire did not deserve to be the thing that claimed Shepard's life. No, Shepard had managed to flee, he was certain of that.

This was practically confirmed when one of the Chimera troops that was patrolling the perimeter jogged up to the Legionnaire, breathing hard through his helmet from the exertion and also from the nearby heat.

"Sir," the trooper reported, "scanners are reporting no life signs within the house, but the fire has not been going on long enough for anyone to be killed."

"So he's fled," the Legionnaire said as he continued to stare, mesmerized, at the burning house.

The trooper sheepishly tugged at his collar. "That's affirmative, sir."

The Legionnaire glanced behind him with a withering look, watching as the rest of his Chimera accompaniment roamed the hills, the rapid swinging of their laser sights creating bright red fans hurtling through the sky in a to and fro pattern.

Then the cyborg held out a hand in the direction of the trooper.

"Grenade launcher," he ordered.

The trooper appeared to be confused by this. "Sir, what-?"

But the Legionnaire had no time to dither around or be restrained by the slower-minded. Impatient, the Legionnaire roughly grabbed the nearest trooper, spun him around, and yanked the grenade launcher that was hanging off the man's back so hard that the straps tore. The Legionnaire flipped the gun so that the grip was snugly in his hand before he wheeled about and aimed it towards the house.

The tube of the launcher made a hollow noise as it launched the first projectile through the door.

There was a fierce rumble and a mushroom cloud of bright yellow fire puffed out from the opening while a tremendous crashing noise emitted near the back of the house, whereupon another column of smoke began to rise—a result of the ceiling caving in near where the grenade explosion had occurred.

The Legionnaire sent out two more grenades through each of the front-facing windows, causing large chunks of the building to be completely blown off when the released pressure from the combusting gasses blossomed and expanded within the rooms. By the time the legionnaire had lobbed the final grenade, Shepard's home was now in complete shambles—the fire was now allowed to grasp for the sky now that much of the ceiling had been blown away. Crackling and sparking noises also careened into the encroaching night as some of the interior walls crumpled away, sending out a massive plume of embers like a flock of gulls in a feeding orbit.

Tossing the launcher back to the trooper, the Legionnaire started walking away from the flaming wreck. Raising his arm, he keyed in his automated contact number and waited for the connection to be cemented—it always took longer to connect a call when the distance between the conversationalists was very great. Rannoch, being far away from any place in particular, was quite the frustration for bandwidth purists.

" _Identific—_ ," the automated voice began, but the Legionnaire was quick to cut off the robotic response before it could even finish its first word.

"Override signature mark fifty-nine oh-four," the Legionnaire snapped. "Code phrase: _Myotis, Macrotus, Molossus_. Ident: 5907-14-33 Hotel Lima."

" _Connecting_ ," the voice smoothly said, its core processes successfully overridden.

The Legionnaire knew he was only supposed to use this override sparingly, as it put the receiver at an increased level of risk, but he felt he had no choice. He needed to get new orders _now_ and he did not want to be shuttled around by a bunch of proxies parroting requests off each other.

There was an audible click on the other end as the calls connected.

" _Speak_ ," Larsen's gravelly voice burst through.

The Legionnaire had no facial expressions to betray his misgivings, nor could the other person on the line see him as this was a voice call. However, the Legionnaire still had a sour feeling left in whatever remained of his stomach that unnerved him to a certain degree.

"Shepard has fled," the Legionnaire reported sharply. No sense in trying to fluff things up a bit, especially for a man like Larsen. "I made contact with the man, but he managed to evade me. No visual on him at this time."

The lengthy pause that Larsen gave was excruciating. The Legionnaire was never scared but he could not help but be a little unnerved from the delicate tightrope-ing of these mind games that Larsen was playing about with.

" _Is he still on Rannoch?_ "

"Unknown," the Legionnaire admitted. "But I don't see any reason why he would remain on the planet."

" _Why would you think that? And what the hell's that crackling sound?_ "

"That would be the remains of Shepard's house, sir," the Legionnaire looked over his shoulder in affirmation. "It's burning to the ground right about now."

A horrid laugh came in over the comm. " _Goddamn, son. I said take the man into custody, not blow up his home._ "

"It couldn't be avoided. It would stand to reason that with the loss of his house, Shepard would be very inclined to stay away from the region."

" _No doubt, no doubt_ ," Larsen agreed. There was a groaning noise as Larsen was ostensibly stretching out in a chair somewhere back on Earth. " _Well, if the man wasn't on notice already, he certainly is now. In any case, I'm pulling you back, Legionnaire. Your task to apprehend Shepard is suspended for the moment._ "

Suspended? This is not what the Legionnaire was expecting. "Am I to understand that I am being reassigned from my current mission due to what is merely a temporary setback, sir? Because if that's the case—"

" _Not at all. Rest assured, Legionnaire, this decision has nothing to do with your performance. It is for political reasons purely that you are being pulled for the time being._ "

The Legionnaire, not fully understanding, kept quiet.

For his part, Larsen seemed to understand his subordinate's reservations. " _I understand if this comes as a surprise to you, so I'll give you the quick rundown of the situation at the moment. Shepard is a high-profile individual in the media spectrum as a character of great interest. The fact that the general public has no clue of his whereabouts right at this moment is of no consequence. The problem that we face is that we have to pull Shepard out of his private life and into the public spotlight. When Shepard comes back into the fray, and I assure you he will, we have to be able to control the narrative of his return, spin the optics in our direction so that we will be able to apprehend him and not lose any support from the voting base. It must seem that he will return to civilization of his own volition._ "

"I was not informed of this aspect," the Legionnaire growled. "I was assigned to capture Shepard without any regard to the political climate. I don't give a damn what the public would think of what we're doing."

" _Which is why you would make a dreadful politician. Every decision we make can be spun against us. We're treading on a minefield right now—a move against Shepard is only inviting scrutiny upon Chimera and me. I can handle the public up to a certain extent, to the point where I can make it so they'll never find out about this first incident, but we need to limit our contact a bit. Give Shepard some room to breathe_."

"You're expecting him to become complacent once he's roaming the galaxy unthreatened, then?"

" _More or less. From here on out, Shepard can only move closer to where we are. There is a certain predictability to the man that I know can be exploited. He sticks closer to familiarity rather than the unknown. Why else would he remain on Rannoch in the first place? His wife was the only link. There are other places that Shepard has strong ties to—places that we will have an easier time in performing our eventual apprehension._ "

The Legionnaire perked his head up as he now understood. "I see. We've drawn him out, but we have to draw him back in. You want Shepard to come _to_ you."

" _Precisely_."

"You knew that Shepard would escape me the first time, didn't you?"

" _I had a suspicion, knowing the man's… tenacity. Either way, there's a contingency in place_."

Crafty Larsen. In all the years the Legionnaire had worked for the man, Larsen's trick was that he was very good at not showing all the cards in his hand, but just enough of them so that his subordinates could get a clear idea of what Larsen's intention was. The Legionnaire found Larsen's caginess to be irritating most times, but so far the man had never deliberately led him astray just yet.

"Very well," the Legionnaire rumbled. "I will follow your orders, but on one condition."

" _And that would be?_ " Larsen sounded a little miffed. It was rare that people lower than him would _dare_ ply him for their demands.

"Let me know when you're betting against me."

The cold smile that Larsen was undoubtedly making could very well be felt on the Legionnaire's end.

" _A fair proposition. You have my word_."

The chemicals that surrounded the Legionnaire's brain in its housing fizzled with relief. "Then I will pull myself back until you give the order. But Shepard may go to ground again at any time. You might need me to act quickly."

" _Speed is less important than you might think_ ," Larsen laughed. " _We've been looking for this bastard for so long that simply finding him was of the utmost priority—why else did you think that boarding that salarian vessel was so important? Those neurotic little shits had been stockpiling Shepard's location all this time, storing it in their computers, until you came along to take it for Chimera. And now, Shepard has been made aware of our intent for good. We've flipped that rock on that roach. And once that rock is flipped, the roach may try to scramble for cover, or run away as fast as it can, but it's too late. It's out in the open. Now we will always know where it goes. Now we can kill it_."

* * *

 **A/N: I did say the plot would be moving forward, didn't I? But this was probably not how some of you imagined it. Who knows how things can go from here? Let me know what you think of the chapter!**

 **Playlist:**

 **Legionnaire (Cyborg Theme I): "Hal's Child Unchained" by Justin Burnett from the video game _Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain_**

 **Watching the House Burn: "Too Close" by Marc Streitenfeld from the movie _Prometheus_**


	7. Chapter 7: Truth to the Legend

" _Since we're on the subject of potential lobbying grievances, I would like to bring the focus of this committee onto a colleague of yours now, Mr. Koenig. We're going to be referencing a particular individual who has been very… efficient, shall we say, with his time, not to mention his investments. A Mr. Gabriel Vidal, specifically."  
_ Sen. Xi, CPF

" _I'm not sure why you're asking me about Gabe. He's a friend, yes, but I don't see how this pertains to Chimera at all. He's never been employed by my organization."  
_ Erich Koenig, CEO – Chimera

" _Quite true, except that Mr. Vidal has been liberally plying himself as a lobbyist for your corporation in particular. Rather odd, considering that Mr. Vidal's occupation has him working as a vice president for one of the largest banks on the Citadel. Clearly he shouldn't be needing the extra income. Yet there's been ample documentation of him working as a middleman to introduce foreign parties to the wealth of services that Chimera provides. Bear in mind, these foreign parties that Mr. Vidal has worked are clients that seem to be outside the normal scope of Chimera's marketing efforts as they are companies or organizations that have been flagged by one or more governments for suspect activities that run the gamut of every crime we have a law firm. So, tell me, Mr. Koenig, why is Mr. Vidal promoting your business at his expense to bring such unsavory individuals on board with your organization?"_  
Sen. Xi, CPF

" _Honestly? I can't really say, Senator. Gabe's entitled to promote whatever company he wants to anyone. It's well within his purview as a citizen. If Gabe is enticing other parties to take Chimera into their employ, then I'm pretty sure that that's not illegal."  
_ Erich Koenig, CEO – Chimera

" _Mr. Koenig, you are well aware that Chimera, as a private military corporation, is under a non-compete clause preventing it from doing business with anyone other than the Systems Alliance! It does not matter if your other clients are unaffiliated with any outside government—what is illegal is your corporation playing both sides for a profit. On top of that, you appear to have a rogue agent peddling Chimera for no apparent reason other than the potential he is receiving suspect monetary contributions for his services. Of course, if we check the balance sheets, I'm sure we won't find any unmarked transactions that could have been used for kickbacks to Mr. Vidal, yes?"  
_ Sen. Xi, CPF

" _Err… no… Senator. I… I do not think so."  
_ Erich Koenig, CEO – Chimera

* * *

Black.

All she could see was black.

If she even held up her hand to about a foot away from her face, she could not see the limb that she knew was attached to her arm. She was in a void. A vacuum. Where reality appeared to be devoid of shape or purpose.

Then, all of a sudden, a light winked into existence in the distance.

Warmth. Peace.

Motes of illumination within an expanse of punishing nothingness.

Roahn gasped as light wrapped around the corners of the cave, smoothing over the blackened walls of the tunnels that oozed water. The light slithered across the floor and crept up within the puddles that trapped her boots, perverting her reflection. Moisture clung to the air, turning it fat. It felt like it was an effort to breathe, like the very oxygen was chunky as it pushed through her filters.

Where there had been nothing before, a whole new world had opened up to her in the blink of an eye.

 _What was this cave? Where did it lead?_

This was a strange place. A new place. But for Roahn… there was something inherently familiar about it. Why was that?

Clutching at herself, Roahn tentatively crept through the dank cavern, following the mesh path that had been laid out in front of her as she tiptoed down the passageway—a definite sign that someone had been here long before her. The cave was warm and humid, evidenced by the fact that water was threatening to bead upon her enviro-suit as she traveled deeper and deeper into the hole that had been bored into the heavy earth. Condensation dripped down the rock walls, causing everything to glisten. Echoes of the dribbles rebounded tauntingly from wall to wall, like a pealing laugh.

Several times, Roahn turned around to check if her father would be at her back, if he had followed her down into the hollow, but fifteen minutes later, she was beginning to accept the fact that she was all alone down here. She had trudged this long only to have herself as company.

Had her father left her?

Roahn kept telling herself that she was not in a dream, but it was hard for her to accept because the events of the last half hour had transpired at such a blistering pace that it almost did not seem real. When she had heard her father arguing loudly to someone outside back in her house, it had been her natural instinct to head over to the door to see who had come calling, to see who was responsible for angering her father. She was greeted with quite the surprise when she had opened the door to check things out. The enormous and metallic individual with menacing orange eyes had immediately rooted her to the spot with its harsh gaze once it had been aware of her presence. Roahn had felt nothing but _evil_ radiating from the thing. It had frightened her to the point where she was nearly catatonic. Her father had shouted at her to get back inside, fearful for her safety… but for some reason, she had found herself unable to do so.

She had withered underneath the stare, paralyzed by her nerves. A cry had almost bubbled from her throat, an involuntary panic reflex at the sight of this pure menace.

The fear… the lethargy. A hidden pain had burgeoned in her chest, clawing straight for her heart.

Mere seconds after she had failed to move in time, Roahn had seen this terrible look overcome her father. His face had darkened and contorted into such an expression of rage that she had never seen on him before. Whatever evil had resided into the intruder had now seemed to have possessed her father, claiming him in the name of a welcome violence. In all honesty, right then, her father had frightened her more than their guest.

And then… she saw the most harrowing, daunting, _wonderful_ conflagration burst from her father's arms as he seemingly _pushed_ the cyborg away from her, away from the house. Destruction had stood between the two combatants, creating a vortex that repelled the two of them away from each other, for the moment.

Simultaneously stricken by fear and awed at the speed at which Shepard had rushed to defend her, Roahn had let herself be picked up by her dad only for him to shove her out of sight in some hidden passage—away from harm, she realized, but only to subject himself to more pain and fear instead of trying to save himself as well.

 _He should be here with me!_ Roahn helplessly thought.

She had spent several minutes clambering down the ladder after finding no way to get back into the house. It had simply been too dark for Roahn to make out anything so, beholden by a heavy feeling in her stomach, she had slowly made her way down. The only evidence that anything was amiss at all in her house up above was the occasional rumbling noise that caused streams of dirt to filter down from the top of the shaft, which landed on Roahn and dirtied her _sehni_. It sounded like the end of the world up there. Eventually Roahn found out, to her surprise, that the passageway continued on after she had reached the bottom, having been bored completely through the thick bedrock of the Rannochian crust, that whatever kind of network was underneath her house, it was more expansive than she had initially thought.

The cave did not end. It simply _extended_.

The tunnel was a little roughened, but Roahn did note that it was pretty well traveled. There was a rubber mat pathway that had been laid out for people to walk upon without slipping on the slimy rock, and strings of lamps had been hung up on the walls, nailed securely into place. The lamps themselves were motion activated so that whenever Roahn wandered close to the nearest diodes, they would ignite. Good news for Roahn—this meant that her endeavor through this passageway would not be spent in the pitch black darkness.

An underground passage… that underneath her very nose this entire time. Literally.

Clearly this had been a feature of the house for a while. But for how long? Her father had known about it, obviously. One more secret that he had kept from her.

Had her mother known about this as well?

As Roahn walked, the tunnel began to open up into a larger cavern, a significant bubble encased by the medium of dense stone. She was struck yet again by another surprise when she saw that, on the far end of the hollow, a series of large workbenches sat illuminated and awaiting. Roahn headed over and examined the equipment, careful not to step off the path and slip on a patch of algae. Racks upon racks of tools sat in chests and on the tables. Hardy tools, the kind used in engineering. Project work, perhaps. Some of them lay askew on the tables, indicating that they had indeed been used, that their owner would return any second to place them back to their assigned spots. A fine coating of dust draped over the stainless steel table, confirmed when Roahn ran a finger over them, leaving a clear line etched into the mess. While the tools _had_ been used, they had clearly not been touched for a while. Years, even.

"A… workshop?" Roahn murmured as she wandered around the rows of tables and equipment. Her breathing becoming more rapid, she continued to examine the toys at her disposal.

Whoever had seen to outfitting this place, they had definitely equipped it well. Roahn did a quick accounting, her focused brain adept at tallying the equipment on hand, and discovered that the benches were equipped with a holo-console feed (which still had power thanks to a self-replenishing thermal generator a few meters away), that the consoles themselves contained licenses for some of the most advanced engineering programs that could be found, and that nearby, there was a sealed glass case twice as tall as her that contained vacuum-sealed bins with clearly marked labels printed upon their face.

 _Platinum, palladium, iridium, and element zero_ , Roahn read.

She had trouble understanding the big picture. These were all rare and extremely valuable elements, and someone had probably half a million credits worth of these materials hidden in a cave underneath her house. Who would put these here and why? Elements like these were used primarily in major technological and fabrication operations. Unless an automated production line for skunkworks materials was hidden off in another cavern under here as well, Roahn could not fathom a clear reason as to why these elements might be here.

But then Roahn backed up a step, which caused another diode to be activated from her presence.

Light was thrown up around Roahn's back and she turned around, only to jump back with a yelp as a looming figure suddenly appeared through the brilliant white illumination.

Nearly two meters tall. Bipedal in form. Coated with a gleaming yellow armor. A major/minor lens design.

Roahn would have turned tail in order to hide, but she stopped just milliseconds shy from performing the action, mostly because she realized that the figure was not moving. It was standing upright but completely statuesque. It was not a mock-up, but an actual figure that had the potential to move. Not living, but not exactly dead, either.

In seconds, Roahn realized just exactly what she was looking at.

A geth.

A foreboding and intimidating specimen to Roahn, but her initial fear was quickly quelled with the knowledge that the geth was safe to be around. It was deactivated—not a threat. Roahn forced the distant memory to come to mind—Tali had told Roahn years ago of a geth that she had worked alongside with for almost a year, a particular unit given the name of Legion. Tali had admitted to Roahn that she had some misgivings of Legion at first, not to mention that she had been deathly afraid to be in the same room with it for quite some time. However, after making time to carefully engage Legion in conversation, Tali's mindset quickly evolved. Legion, along with the help Roahn's father had apparently provided, had ended up completely changing Tali's perception of the geth, or so she had been told, the ramifications of which in turn had led to the eventual reunification of quarian and geth as allies, no longer enemies. Rannoch had been reunited by Tali's refusal to keep to the past.

Again, that was how the story went.

Roahn had never seen a geth in the "flesh" before, and she tentatively crept up to it with an earnest look in her eyes. It was creepy at first glance, she admitted, but she quickly grew used to the sight of the synthetic. She would not want it attacking her, but she realized that she could see herself becoming familiarized with it, given enough time. If it worked for her mother, it could work for her.

The geth's armor was polished, the color of goldenrod, and it was particular glossy in the searing light. The geth's head was a curved piece of construction that was dominated by a large major lens coupled with a significantly tinier minor lens to the direct upper right of the major lens, positioned much like the relationship between a planet and its moon. Both lenses were darkened, though, a clear visual indicator of this particular geth's operational state.

Out of commission.

What drew Roahn's attention next was upon the breastplate of the geth itself. Two holes had been bored through the armor there, slicing clean through the synthetic mechanisms—Roahn could see all the way through the geth to the other side. Roahn gingerly touched the edges of the metal holes and found that the polymer material around the holes was melted. Extreme heat, Roahn figured. A plasma cannon could theoretically accomplish such focused damage. So, it was clear that this geth had not been permanently deactivated during the end of the war, but it had apparently been shot sometime prior to that. In quarian-speak, this was as natural of a death that could come for a geth.

Roahn could never forget the stories that her mother and her instructors had been telling her about the geth. She felt like she had been familiarized with the tales from the moment she was born. It was natural for quarians to instill upon the coming generations of what the geth had done to their race, or as her mother had later corrected, what the _quarians_ had done to the geth. Her elders would make sure that from now until she was old enough for adulthood that she would never have a chance to forget the devastating war that took place on Rannoch three hundred years ago, when millions of souls had been killed by the geth in retaliation for the quarian's initial strike upon them, their creations.

The knee-jerk reaction to wipe out the geth was a decision that was still controversial today as the very topic was an open invitation for intense debate, especially amongst the quarians. Even today, twelve years after a tentative peace had been established between the quarians and geth, there were still prominent members of the Admiralty Board that were not in concert regarding the morality of the decision to attack the geth when it had been determined that their collective intelligence had been growing at a rate faster than what the quarians could control. Their eventual choice (which most individuals would designate as the _worst_ choice the quarians could have made) and subsequent exile would stunt the development of the quarians for centuries to come, the effects of which would continue to ripple for generations long after Roahn was gone.

But all that was immaterial, Roahn thought. The geth were all gone now. They had been wiped out in the final battle on Earth. No one could really pinpoint as to why the geth had perished all those years ago, but it was surmised that the geth had been too radically altered by the Reapers that, when the punishing wave of energy that flew from the Crucible came to overtake them, they were not discriminated upon and suffered the same fate as the Reapers.

Since then, it was quarian policy to tag any geth chassis for disposal or disassembly. Her mother had said to Roahn that their government was not so eager to try to catch up on trying to replicate the geth at the moment, despite knowing that they had a second shot at making things right this time. Roahn remembered that Tali had seemed particularly dismayed at the decision her people made, feeling that not investing resources into trying to reactivate any geth would be an eventual hindrance to their growth. After all, the quarians' numbers were still too few. They needed more manpower to develop the planet. Manpower which they did not have.

But if all geth chassis had to be turned over to the government for dispensation, why was there one in this workshop?

"Don't worry, it won't wake," a voice breathed from the distant corridor.

Further unanswered questions would just have to wait as a shuffling sound from near where Roahn had entered the cavern now began to echo about the shining walls. Momentarily frozen, not recognizing the voice at first, Roahn's eyes scrambled around in her sockets as she frantically looked for a place to hide, torn by indecision. However, her entire body quickly relaxed soon after as her brain caught up to her body as she recognized the voice itself, finding familiarity in the low and raspy tones.

And anger. Roahn could find a lot of anger within herself.

A grimace came to her face and she bunched her hands into fists as she stepped up to where the newcomer was entering.

"You left me _alone_ , you—!" she began to cry out only to stop dead in her tracks, her arms rapidly lowering back down again as the rage left her in an instant.

From out of the shadows, Shepard stumbled into view, a backpack strap clenched in a hand, his forehead blotched red with his blood. His hands were also darkened and bloody, and he was clutching his side while a horrid wheezing sound was escaping his mouth. He gave a short cough before he looked up at the sound of his daughter's voice, relief finding its way into his eyes.

" _Keelah_ , dad!" Roahn gasped as she closed the distance between them. There was obviously no sense in antagonizing her father now, especially since someone else had already done the job for her.

"I'm… I'm not doing too badly," Shepard muttered unconvincingly before he laid a hand gently upon Roahn's shoulder. "But I _am_ doing better, knowing that you're all right."

Through wide eyes, Roahn fell into step next to her dad as he limped over to the workshop table that Roahn had temporarily abandoned. Her fury had cooled upon seeing Shepard all battered up and she felt guilty that she had been nearly about to scream her lungs up to give him a piece of her mind for seemingly leaving her all on her own.

Meanwhile, Shepard reached the nearest workbench and, through a practiced familiarity, began to rummage about in one of the drawers for something. The fact that he did not find this place to be such a convenience was immediately suspect to Roahn—so this whole place was an official addition to the house. Shepard quickly found a tube of medi-gel that had been stowed in the back of the bottom drawer and immediately proceeded to dab a few healthy dollops onto the superficial cuts that marred his brow and knuckles. He then wiped away the remaining blood on his body with a spare towel. With that done, Shepard prepared two injections—one filled with medi-gel that he inserted near his ribs, another filled with his usual sour-yellow medication that he applied into his subcutaneous layer.

The medicine did its work in mere moments—skin fused together, bones knitted themselves up, and torn muscle fibers pulled themselves back into one piece. Shepard sighed gratefully as the pain dissipated from his body and he gingerly stood back up, testing his weight as he shifted from foot to foot, making sure that he was completely mobile again.

However, Shepard caught Roahn stealing several glances at the upright geth on the other side of the cave, noting that she was particularly interested in being face to face with a geth for the first time, albeit a deactivated one.

"Your mother's project," Shepard indicated to Roahn, limply gesturing in the geth's direction. "She had always wanted to see if it was possible to reactivate the geth. Bring them back to life, that sort of thing. She kept it down here because tinkering on geth right now is in a gray legal area on Rannoch. It's not outlawed, but it's extremely controlled. Tali simply did not want to draw attention to her work, which is why she added all of this to the house." He gestured around the cavern for emphasis.

"I didn't know we had this as part of the house," Roahn said as she stared up towards the grid of stalactites hanging over their heads like roughened daggers poised to fall.

"I may have been at fault for giving your mother the inspiration. She watched so many human vids with me that featured the protagonists possessing secret lairs that she sort of decreed that, when our house was to be built, she would have a secret passageway and a lair for only us to use and know about. I let her run wild with her imagination in here. Tali always did have such a mischievous streak." Turning his attention back to the geth, Shepard gave a tiny sigh. "A human actually came to Rannoch and donated this particular geth to the activation center in the capitol, which was where Tali procured it. _Stole_ it, I should say. Apparently the human had given this specific geth the designation of 'Sagan,' as he had been quite fond of it. A surprisingly robust model. Tali had a lot of inspiration working on this geth, let me tell you—,"

"-Who _was_ that up there, dad?" Roahn interrupted, not exactly sure that it was safe for her to begin asking such pointed questions, but she was bursting at the seams as it was already. She needed information—her lack of context was practically suffocating her until she was blue in the face.

Shepard's face was hard, unmoving, but he was unable to look his daughter in the eye as he sat back down onto the table with a groan. "Just my past finally catching up with me, I guess." He flexed his fingers, feeling the effects of time robbing his maneuverability. "All too early, though."

" _Dad_ ," Roahn emphasized as she placed her hands on her hips, a tic that she had adopted from her mother when she was mad. "What _happened?_ "

Shepard just shook his head blithely, sluggishly, as he was clearly struggling to look his daughter in the eye. "I'm so sorry, Roahn," he croaked. "It's gone. It's all gone."

" _What's_ all gone? Dad?"

"The house," he wheezed as a brief tear trickled into his eye before he furiously wiped it away, before Roahn could see it. "It's no longer there. They took that from me too. First Tali, now the house. What else is going to be taken from me?! What else do I have?!"

Furious, Shepard slammed a fist down onto the stainless table, causing the poor tools that had been lying there to jump a foot into the air. The clang was loud, ferocious, and refused to die as it echoed within the cave.

Roahn was simply struggling to keep up. The house was gone? Was that the reason behind all those horrid rumbling noises she had been hearing ever since she had made her way down here? Destroyed? She couldn't believe it. That house had been the only home she had ever known in her life. To even think that it was no longer there…

"Who did this, dad?" Roahn continued to press as she knelt down to where Shepard sat. "Why is this happening to us? I saw… I saw that thing outside… and then I saw you. You… you _changed_ right there. You a-a- _attacked_ it, drew it into a fight. You were so fearsome. So… _angry_. Angrier than I've ever seen you before."

Shepard was clenching a hand over his mouth as his thumb grimly dug into a cheekbone. "I had hoped this day would never come," he said. "All these years, all this time we've been here. I thought I could keep us safe." He finally looked at Roahn before he was unable to bear the pleading look in her eyes. "I've put us in danger, Roahn. All because of my stubbornness. Chimera came for me because of the choices I made years ago. I never took that target off my back this whole time and now… now you're a target as well."

Roahn still didn't understand and she fumbled in place as she tried to think of something to say, but the words would not come.

"We need to go," Shepard got to his feet in the wake of his daughter's silence. "We need to get to our ship at the city if we're going to have a chance to escape this planet."

" _N-Not y-yet_ ," Roahn carefully squeaked out as she rooted herself to the spot, standing upright and dignified, adopting a stubborn pose.

Shepard sighed as he partially turned around, not at all having any patience right now. "Don't argue with me, Roahn. We can't afford to delay."

Roahn was having trouble forming her words through her heavy breaths.

"I'm… I'm not leaving. I won't. Not until… you tell me… what is going on."

Shepard's eyes turned into narrow slits while Roahn swallowed painfully. Defying her father so openly, under such circumstances, was so potent to her nerves that it was almost painful. It felt like someone was taking a rake to her skin for she was so on edge with anticipation and nervousness.

"I'm trying to do what's best for the both of us, Roahn," Shepard said as he knelt down to Roahn's height. "If I have to keep you in the dark to protect you, I will do just that."

Roahn could not stop herself from throwing out her arms to give her father a rude shove, but Shepard was built like a tank, solid and unmoving. All Roahn could manage to do was move his chest back an inch or so.

"All you've been _doing_ is keeping me in the dark!" Roahn cried as she stamped her foot in frustration, the sound reverberating wetly within the cave. "I don't know anything about you, dad! I have no idea who you are! You say that you want to protect me, but I don't feel so protected. I mean, _keelah_ , you can't even protect yourself! _Look_ at you!"

Shepard did not need to look at his disheveled appearance or his bloodstained clothes to know that there was some truth to Roahn's words. What Roahn did not notice at first was that Shepard was struggling to keep his emotions in check, firmly reigned back, but as she continued to berate him, Shepard could not stop his bottom lip from trembling ever so slightly and he dipped his head in shame.

Roahn's finger had been outstretched at him accusingly, but she slowly let her arm droop back down as she finally saw her father's tears.

"There's so much of your mother in you," he uttered thickly as he fiercely wiped his eyes. "So much, Roahn. She used to talk to me like this, you know. She always said that I was too stubborn for my own good. She was right, of course, but seeing you like this… all I can think of is her."

Chewing his lip, Shepard continued. "Tali was one of the few who ever saw the potential in me to be a better man, a better person. This whole time I know I've been failing her. I admit, Roahn… being a soldier was easier for me than being a father. That was just… something that I was born for. Something that I had the instinct for. I had more control over my life back then. Decades of my life bouncing all over the galaxy, fighting from planet to planet, each and every foe having a different face, it was all familiar to me. The adrenaline of being shot at, the feeling of blood in your veins as you're exerted to your absolute limits, the sights and smells of the battlefield all while death and destruction surrounds you… I got used to that all too quickly. I was in that life for far too long."

"It came back, didn't it?" Roahn whispered. "The sensations, I mean. When… when you were fighting up there…"

"I guess those sensations never truly leave us," Shepard clenched a fist. "Once you get a taste for it, it stays in you forever. Combat is a drug, Roahn. It is addictive and reprehensible. For years and years, I could not stop myself. Every time I stepped into a warzone, time seemed to slow down so that I could view each second in pleasurable chunks. I could manage every singular motion I ever made with my body. I was pumped so full of my natural endorphins that my brain seemed like it was running at ten times the normal speed. I was a junkie. I was beholden to the high. Why else would the commander of an advanced Alliance vessel constantly insist on leading every ground operation personally?"

Now Roahn lifted her finger again, but to prod Shepard gently, to hammer home a fine point instead of levelling another searing accusation at him.

"I don't believe you," she breathed. "You didn't fight to chase some stupid high. You fought because you wanted to save everyone! That's all I've ever read about you! You did it to save the galaxy!"

A faint smile graced Shepard's mouth. "You _read_ about me, huh? What, like my online encyclopedia page?"

"As best as I could," Roahn admitted. "I… couldn't really find that many details, though."

"Probably because I never gave any to anyone outside of my closest confidants. I had this grandiose idea of saving the galaxy, you are right about that, Roahn, but the combat high followed me everywhere. I tried to resist it at first but over time I grew to crave the feeling. It was… so simple. The need to save everyone and the urge to remain in control of my destiny became intertwined. I had a purpose back then, I had a _mission_. I did my job and I did it well. Hell, I _succeeded_. But I knew that I never wanted to have any part of that life again when it was all over. I didn't want that high anymore, knowing that it's nothing but a poison for the body and the mind. When I finally had the opportunity to get out of that life and be with your mother, I seized it. I had escaped. But today… that feeling found me again, Roahn."

Shepard's palms were now facing upright, like he was holding the universe between them. One twitch of his fingers and all reality could distort and crumple in an instant.

"I'm afraid of the burden of protecting you, Roahn," he whispered frantically. "I've tried to protect… so many people… and I haven't saved them all. I've had to watch so many soldier under my command die. The choices I've made and the things that I've seen… I can't be relied upon to protect anyone. You are completely right when you say I have trouble protecting myself, Roahn, which makes me only the more fearful of protecting _you_."

Shivering heavily, Shepard's fingers trembled as he seemed to cup the light as part of an unspoken plea of forgiveness to his daughter.

"I made a promise to Tali when we moved here that you would be spared from such a life. The life of a soldier. I vowed to remove all weapons from my sight, to rid me of any temptation. For me _and_ for you. I'm little better than a murderer, Roahn, because I _enjoyed_ being a soldier. I could not bear it if the same happened to you. Or should I say, it would kill me if my lifestyle proved to be a negative influence upon you. You say I'm a hero, but I'm the furthest thing there is from that. I'm nothing but a… but a disappointment. I tried to be better, but I could not find a way."

Roahn could not speak. Her stomach was twisting and churning in every direction imaginable. Her father, on a knee, had revealed more about himself in the last five minutes than he had ever let on for Roahn's entire life. Her head was reeling—she felt sick yet rejuvenated at the same time. Her breaths squeezed through a clamped throat and her helmet was humid with her perspiration.

Commander Shepard… a disappointment? Was that how he really saw himself? For the longest time, Roahn had been hiding her discontent and grievances for the man, keeping them to herself, but to know that he shared the same sentiment? Roahn felt like she was going to throw up out of sheer grief.

"You agree with me," Shepard said softly, his turn to solemnly stare at his stricken daughter. "I know that I've never given you a reason to truly love me. I shut too much of myself out for that to happen. Way too much."

Clutching at herself, Roahn struggled to breathe. "I… would have _understood_ ," she gasped. "I would not have been disappointed if you had just _told_ me everything!"

"I thought the risk was too great. I thought if I told you how I truly felt, you would hate me for what I did."

Daunted, it took a great effort for Roahn just to shake her head.

"No dad, I hated you because you never talked to me at all!"

Her voice rang hollowly in the cave, lingering far beyond uncomfortableness. Shepard's expression slackened, his piercing blue eyes radiating coldness.

Mortified at her admission, Roahn clamped her hands over her vocabulator. "Dad… I-I'm sorry… I didn't mean… that's not how I—"

"-How you truly feel?" Shepard sighed.

Roahn trembled, her eyes blurry behind the electric blue of her visor. "I don't _want_ to hate you, dad. I don't hate you _now_. But all I wanted was to _understand_ you. That's… that's all I ever wanted."

" _All_ you ever wanted?"

"I wanted a father. I don't think I've ever gotten one."

The grim-looking Shepard gave a solemn nod at that, closing his eyes so that he could ponder the ramifications of his daughter's admission behind closed lids. He swallowed, sending a fresh slew of pain to bubble up, but he quickly shut it out as the raging maelstrom in his head threatened to spill and overflow all sensation. He weathered the storm of emotion, absorbing the intent from the spoken words with a stoic silence.

But there were several kinds of pain that he could not escape.

Had his years of withdrawing himself under the guise of protecting those he loved all been for naught? No… he had to have known this day would come. The truth had a time limit on it—it was bound to get out sooner or later. But this was too soon. Either that or he had gone overboard. Regardless, it truly seemed like he was a disappointment to the family he still had left. What else could he be if his own daughter had been left wanting for so long?

What use was his victory now if he had to face being such a scathing failure afterward?

Why couldn't he see that he was damned?

"I will be honest with you now if you are prepared to be honest with me," Shepard said heavily, weighted down with sadness. "Do you still hate me?"

"No," Roahn leaned into the word. "No, dad. No."

"Do you truly want to know who I am? I warn you, you might not like what you hear."

"I do. I really do."

Now Shepard stood back up, scratching at his gray beard. "If you want to go down this path, then… I will oblige, but-," Shepard waggled a finger at his daughter, who had to fight to prevent herself from making a singular jump of joy, "—I won't tell you everything all at once. I will explain to you who I am and what I have done in my life at times that I deem appropriate. But I promise you, you will learn everything. More so than what you can find in your books or on the extranet. Afterward, you can decide for yourself whether I'm truly a hero… or a disappointment."

Taking all of this in, Roahn nodded emphatically.

"I just want this chance."

Internally, Shepard winced. There were instances where the truth was not the easiest thing to reveal. In some cases, it might not even be the right choice to reveal. Falsehoods were derived to ease the mind, to trick it into a state of delusion, a fantasy for the mind to entertain in order to protect itself.

And Roahn was begging to be lifted from such protection.

Shepard finally realized that he would never look at Roahn in the same light again after today. Things would be changed permanently. Time would only tell if the truth would make her all the more stronger.

Would the truth make _him_ stronger, though?

Gesturing to where the mesh path continued just past a winding crevasse that blended in with the walls, Shepard's look turned icy.

"We'll soon see how you use this chance, then. But first, we're leaving this planet. You'll find out what it means to be my daughter, Roahn. _That_ I promise you."

Roahn just hoped that _this_ promise would be worth something this time.

* * *

It did not take long for Shepard and Roahn to reach the surface, in which they had continued through a tight and snake-like path that seemed to crack all throughout the cliff. Roahn had completely lost her bearings while following her father, in which she had no choice but to trust that his sense of direction was still as sharp as it had ever been.

Fortunately, she did not have to worry for long, because Shepard quickly murmured a curt, "We're here," to her after about ten minutes of walking, coupled with a firm hand gesture to indicate for her to stop in place. Roahn was starting to get a little claustrophobic in here, though. The ceiling seemed way too low and the walls were extremely cramped, even for her, and to top it off, it looked like the two of them had run into a dead end. Fighting down panic, Roahn resisted the urge to fidget, no matter how much she wanted to.

But Shepard reached his hand out and moved it behind an outcropping, into a hidden pocket clothed in darkness that Roahn would have never thought to look. Shepard grasped at an object in this alcove and gave a quick yank, causing a low scraping noise to occur as _something_ unlatched itself near them.

Shepard then splayed his hands out on the smooth end of the tunnel and _pushed_ , causing the entire wall to swing outward, on a hinge.

A blast of wind hit the two of them in a full on gale. It was impossible for Roahn not to detect the smell of the ocean through her air filters. She gave an involuntary gasp in surprise. Shepard turned back at the noise his daughter had made and gave a faint smile.

"I told you," he said, "your mother watched too many films. She knew that every secret lair worth its salt had more than one entrance."

Roahn could only stare blankly as she stepped out onto a bed of soft sand while Shepard closed the door behind her. The squishy substance filtered between her booted toes. Just a few more strides and suddenly she was clear of the cave. Clear of the entire cliff, in fact. She was suddenly on the beach, with the entire sea in front of her.

Dusk had fallen in the entire time that Roahn had been in the cave. The sun had set half an hour ago, but Roahn was still able to see quite well. The sky near the horizon line was a mesmerizing band of hues ranging from orange, to green, to blue, all the way to a near perfect black. Clusters of stars lit up the night, as did the disc of the Milky Way as its cloudy glow wrapped across the night. The illumination reflected clean off of Roahn's visor as she gazed upward, momentarily taken by the sight.

A touch at Roahn's shoulder caused her to jump in place.

"We need to move," Shepard said sternly. "We've got fifteen miles to cover to get to the capitol."

He didn't add that there was the probable chance that people would be right on their heels, looking to do them harm. Shepard figured Roahn was a quick study; she would learn to adapt quickly.

Silently, Roahn followed her father as he walked to the north, parallel to the coast, making sure to keep near the vertical cliff wall. The sound of the waves masked their already-quiet footsteps as they shuffled along the sand. Roahn noticed that the cover of night coupled with their dark attire helped them blend in extremely well against the dark colors of the cliff stone.

The cliff did not extend the entire way along the coast, though, as it eventually began to slope downward until it reached the sea level. It was at this point that Shepard and Roahn crossed over, stepping past the road that led to the city, and into the wilderness that was nestled next to the mountains. The two waded into a sea of chest-high shrubs and bushes, using the dry vegetation as cover now that they could no longer hide behind the cliff anymore. The terrain here was rougher and suffered from constant shifts in elevation, but Roahn found that she was able to easily adjust to the gradient, finding that her soles had more grip here in the dirt than in the sand back on the beach.

As they crested a hill, Shepard paused for a second to turn back, looking the way that they had come. Roahn followed Shepard's actions, able to spot quickly what her father was looking at.

Even in the dying day, Roahn was still able to perceive a thick column of smoke rising from near the edge of the cliff two miles away. If she did not already know what that pertained to, then the soft glow of a raging fire leaping into the air, the source of the smoke, should have been a good indicator.

That was her home over there. Burning and crumpled into oblivion. Shattered to pieces while the embers of her life swirled over it in a cyclone.

 _My… my things_ , Roahn realized. _My action figures. My room. They're really all gone._

"Come on," Shepard urged as he began to pick up the pace once more. "We can't dawdle for long."

Torn from the horrific sight, Roahn stumbled a bit as she forced herself to look away. "Are… are you just going to walk away from that? Are you going to let the people who destroyed our house get away with it?"

"It's not about letting anyone get away with it," Shepard corrected as he brushed past a thorny bush. "The past is the past. We can't bring our home back by going after the specific individuals that destroyed it. That will only increase the risk of one of us getting hurt. I'm not about to jeopardize our safety for a revenge so unsatisfying."

"Do you even have a plan for what we're going to do?"

"Possibly. Right now, I'm more focused on keeping ourselves safe than I am about looking to pick a fight."

"Yeah, b-but—,"

"—But, nothing," Shepard said sternly, not looking behind him. "Things have changed, Roahn. I'm not a commander anymore, I'm your father. _You're_ the only one that I have to protect now and I can't do that if I go out of my way to charge into a fight that could be avoided otherwise. I will only fight to defend us, no more."

The logic made so much sense to Roahn that any potential comebacks she had thought up dissolved instantly in her brain. Humbled once more, she was relegated to silence again as she trekked behind Shepard, easily able to keep up, despite the challenging hike.

The night was cold, but easily mitigated courtesy of Roahn's enviro-suit. She was concentrating more on the burning sensation in her legs from all the walking she was doing in these rough hills—muscles she never even knew she had were starting to twinge, letting her know that they were taking the strain quite well, but simultaneously indicating for her to take things easy. She clamped her mouth shut, not griping, as she matched her father in stride, determined to show him that she could keep up just as well as he could.

The two of them did not talk for more than an hour as they struggled to cut a path through the thick brush. Shepard was deliberately avoiding the main road as that would be the place where enemies were most likely to reside. They walked silently, placing their heels on the ground first then rolling through to the balls of their feet to minimize the noise they emitted.

Roahn's mouth felt rather dry by this time and her lungs were starting to become strained from her heavy exertions. They had probably covered two more miles—at this rate, they would reach the capitol at the crack of dawn. Roahn was about to summon up a reserve of energy to keep her griping to a minimum when suddenly, her eyes focused on a cylindrical object that Shepard had silently held out to her, drawn from the knapsack he carried upon his back.

A water bottle. Filled to the brim. How did Shepard even know she needed it?

"Thank you," Roahn remembered her manners as she took the offered bottle. The bottle came with a straw, which she inserted into a slot near the base of her helmet. The water was warm and had a mildly chemical aftertaste but Roahn was not about to be picky here. She guzzled down a quarter of the bottle's contents in seconds, giving a happy murmur as her thirst was abruptly quenched.

"A lot of people like to think that they can last a long time without water," Shepard said as he utilized a nearby boulder as a seat, taking a much-appreciated break. "Squad leaders are trained to look for signs of dehydration in their subordinates. Lagging gait, loudness of breath, those kinds of things. It's not a sign of weakness if you need to drink. Your body is telling you _exactly_ what it needs and in situations like this, it is critical that you listen to it."

Roahn removed the straw from the slot, sealed the bottle, and hooked it to her belt. "Did you have to tell mom that a lot when you were working with her?"

"Actually, your mother had some of the best stamina I'd ever seen in a soldier. Surprised the hell out of us all, in fact. She could walk the length of a marathon and fight an entire rachni horde off before she would feel compelled to take in water. Of course I had to remind her to drink every once in a while, but she once lasted the entirety of a mission on the planet Noveria without even needing to take a single sip, and as far as I know she was perfectly healthy at the end. She was everything I could have ever wanted in a partner. Everything and so much more."

Shepard's head then perked up as his ears, still attuned after all these years, picked up a crackling of a branch—a nearby disturbance.

"Something's wrong," he whispered urgently. "Get down."

Roahn leaped behind a cluster of boulders taller than her and knelt down to minimize her profile. Shepard followed suit, but kept his head peaking above the rocks, making sure that he was standing absolutely still, completely silent.

Desperate to keep her breathing as quiet as possible, Roahn slowly took in her breaths through her teeth, expanding her lungs and forcing all her alveoli to absorb as much oxygen as possible to prevent her from hyperventilating. The throbbing in her ears was back and blackness was beginning to creep into the corners of her vision, but Roahn mimicked her father's lead, not keen on disobeying him.

And… yes! There was definitely a crackling noise off in the distance. Very close, in fact. A series of them. The snapping of dried twigs, the crunching of dirt and sand underfoot. Life forms. Several life forms.

"Damn it," Shepard whispered as his eyes narrowed. "We've been followed. They saw our footprints in the sand."

"Who's following?" Roahn asked as she tried to peek her head up but Shepard roughly shoved her back down.

" _Quiet!_ " he hissed. "Don't make another sound."

"But I don't—,"

Shepard dropped to a knee and firmly grasped Roahn's shoulders, squaring her up with him. "I have to go take care of this. To keep you safe. Roahn, no matter what, _do not watch what happens_. I mean it. Shut your eyes and don't open them until I tell you to."

Without another word, Shepard swiftly moved away, ducking into the bushes for the tall desert grass to swallow him up, making him invisible in seconds. Now alone again, Roahn could only hunker down, drawing herself into a tight ball as the rock patch clustered all around her.

From the protected natural shelter she was wedged in, Roahn barely could see a few meters in all directions. She had lost sight of her father—no doubt he was in the grass field somewhere—and she was still so disoriented that she almost had the urge to cry out to him in terror. All she knew was that someone was close by—too close—and that they had every intention of hurting her.

But what could her father do? Hurt them back?

Was that really what his plan was going to be?

Keeping her eyes wide open, Roahn stilled herself as she saw a flitter of red light spear through the tips of the grass blades just a few meters south. The focused beam wavered and swept in blistering red fans across the area: a laser sight. The tiny pinprick of light found the rock above Roahn's head and the beam jerked slightly. There were more snapping noises as _something_ was tramping its way through the waist-high grass.

The blades of the hilly meadow parted and what looked like a human in a bulky defensive covering stepped into view. This individual was wearing an angular set of armor colored black and dark red; the armor itself partitioned its colors in a vertical slice so that the red aspects only took up a quarter of the surface area. The suit itself was patterned in an urban sort of camouflage and the helmet was mostly a heavily tinted visor with a soft point near where the forehead of the human should have been. The front half of the helmet was reinforced transparisteel colored metallic-black with raised little hexagonal slices for its textured pattern, while from the temples back the construction was made up of a titanium alloy, the backbone of the helmet. The man was also well-armed, judging from the fearsome rifle he was currently toting as well as the pistol he had strapped onto a leg.

Some sort of soldier, Roahn realized. But she could see no insignia, no clue as to what faction this man belonged to.

There were more noises of a disturbance in the hilly grass field as two additional shadowy shapes flittered in and out of view. Three troopers in total, all armed and dangerous. They patrolled the perimeter of the field, keeping their heads on a swivel as they were clearly ready to kill.

The human closest to Roahn swept his gaze back and forth over the plain, ever vigilant as he scanned the area. He looked amongst the grass waving lazily in the ocean breeze, to the cluster of rocks jutting out from the ground. The point of the laser sight on his gun was a perfect indicator of exactly where the man was looking. It fluttered around on the ground, tracing the footprints embedded in the dirt from Shepard, slowly up the rock that had been smoothened from time and the elements.

 _Uh oh,_ Roahn thought.

The little laser point dragged itself around the mass of stones, the raspy breathing of the human coming through his helmet's vocabulator—the footprints had given Roahn away, the soldier _knew_ that they were somewhere close by!

After a moment's hesitation, the point skewed a few feet across towards the base of the rock cluster, but just before the soldier could turn away, he spied the flash of color that adorned a little hand. A hand wrapped in an enviro-suit that gripped around the corner of the rocks—Roahn's hand—and the laser sight led right to the point between Roahn's eyes as the soldier finally _saw_ her, his finger agonizingly growing closer to the trigger as he realized that he had the girl under his—

The grass behind the armored human suddenly exploded in a rush.

Shepard erupted from the grass in a ferocious but silent maneuver, within the soldier's blind spot, and wrapped an arm around the man's neck in an instant like a python. Roahn fell backward and let out a tiny cry that was swallowed up by the rustling of the grass. The booming noise in her ears seized her and rang within her head a roar for blood. Roahn hallucinated flares of light across her vision, obscuring her view, and causing her breathing to quell. Redness fell over her and she dug her fingers into the earth to steady herself.

Realizing too late that he was being strangled, the soldier dropped his weapon, sending the laser sight zooming harmlessly away into the side of the mountain, as he tried to scream for help. The man's throat could not take in enough air, though. He could only make pitiful gurgles as Shepard squeezed with all his might. Shepard was just too strong—even at his age, the cybernetics in his body made him more powerful than the common man.

Shepard clenched his teeth as he wrenched his arms with all his strength.

Staring upwards at the hideous sight, Roahn's mouth fell open as she watched her father choke the life out of the man. Shepard's mouth was set in a hard line and his eyes were angled downward in fury. The tendons in his arms were jutting out from his skin, pulling hard at the muscle there. A singular bead of sweat trickled down Shepard's nose, but he ignored it as he tightened his arm further and further, digging deep into the cartilage of the man's neck.

In less than a minute, the soldier's arms began to droop, no longer struggling anymore. He had lost his flow of oxygen to his brain. Consciousness was lost in seconds. But Shepard knew that strangulation by itself was a slow way to kill someone. Even knocking someone out in this fashion did not automatically mean death. He did not have that sort of time.

Without warning, Shepard grabbed hold of his elbow in a torturously firm grip and rotated his shoulders ninety degrees in less than a second.

There was an uncomfortably loud crunching sound.

Shepard released his grip and the man dropped dead at his feet, his head dangling at an awkward angle courtesy of a broken neck.

Not even breathing hard, Shepard looked at the dead man crumpled below him and slowly tilted his head up, finding to his horror, the shocked eyes of his own daughter staring back at him.

He could not even muster an explanation for what she had just seen. Even he did not realize the complete ramifications of what he had just did, but they did trickle in one at a time. He had just _murdered_ someone… in front of Roahn. What could the girl think of him now? How could he ever convince her of his virtuous intentions after this?

Unwilling to confront that growing demon just yet, Shepard regretfully gave a slow blink before he bent down and picked up the dead man's rifle. Now doing his damnedest to shut Roahn out for the moment, Shepard checked the weapon, finding that it still had a full clip, not to mention that whoever had equipped the soldiers had installed a silencer onto the rifle. A perfect weapon for stealth work.

With a heavy heart, Shepard once again ducked into the grass, where he knew that two more soldiers were out looking for him and his daughter. Doubtless they would soon realize that one of their own was missing. He had to make sure that they would not send out a signal for backup.

The troopers were easy to find because, despite the low profile of their weapons, they were not all that cautious with the amount of sound they were causing as they walked. It took Shepard only a couple of minutes until he determined that he was in a good position. He steeled himself—this would have to be quick if he wanted this to go right.

Rising from the grass as smoothly as a specter, Shepard already had the rifle butt wedged against his shoulder, the sights lined up with his right eye as he quickly let the crosshairs fall upon the head of the closest armored soldier. He had not even been spotted yet as his noiseless approach had garnered him with a high degree of temporary invisibility.

Only his fingertip moved as the trigger was pulled. The rifle coughed and lightly kicked back against Shepard's shoulder. The first soldier immediately dropped as the bullet hit him square on the side of the head, a dark burst of blood and brains jetting out upon the other end of his skull as the kinetic energy of the bullet punched through flesh and bone. He fell only to be swallowed up by the grass, no trace of his existence seemingly remaining. It was as if the ground had consumed him whole.

Shepard had shifted his aim to the third and final trooper, who had been facing his cohort at the time he had bought the farm. The trooper caught a flicker of movement—black on black—and turned imperceptibly to find that Shepard had him good and tagged. Shepard did not fire just yet and the trooper did not bother to put his weapon up. The scowl on Shepard's mouth furrowed deeper as he tensed his body in preparation.

There was no joy in what he was about to do next. Nothing to celebrate. He could find no reason to revel in this small victory.

The trooper gave a disgusted sigh, almost like he was about to make a declaration of defeat, but that moment quickly passed as a tiny burst of flame emitted from the barrel of Shepard's gun, a tiny sun in a microcosm of night. The bullet careened into the trooper's head, sending shards of armor spinning through the air to join with the brains that fountained along with it.

The grass eagerly accepted this dead trooper as well.

Shepard tossed the rifle shortly thereafter, rejecting the inherent beckoning of violence the weapon exuded.

The saddened man walked over to where his daughter had been hiding, a grim look in his eyes as he found innocence shattered in Roahn's stare.

Silently, Shepard reached out a hand for Roahn to take. Haltingly, Roahn took the offered hand, her tiny three fingers being easily surrounded by Shepard's five. Shepard helped his daughter to her feet and led her away from the rock cluster, positioning himself between her and the nearest body. All Roahn could see of what remained of their pursuers was a singular pair of black armored legs sticking out from a forest of dry grass. She felt her breathing quicken and Shepard gently guided her head to look the other way, not wanting her to see the carnage.

It took several minutes before either one of them found the strength to speak again. By then, the two of them had gotten well clear of the massacre site, leaving the bodies to rest in their place as the peaceful night sought to bring calm back to the chaos.

"I thought I told you to close your eyes," Shepard croaked into the still air. "I… I wish you hadn't seen that."

Shepard seemed to be looming massively over Roahn as she found herself seemingly shrinking in her father's presence. "You… _killed_ them."

"I know. But I had no choice."

"That was all… _normal_ for you," Roahn muttered, in shock. "You knew what to do. You didn't hesitate."

Breathing out bitterly, Shepard tightened his grip around his daughter's hand as they continued to walk away. "It was the only life I had for a while. Like I said, you never truly forget what it means to be a soldier."

"But you looked so _terrifying_. Like a different person. When you… when you killed those men… it wasn't clean. It wasn't glamorous like any of the vids. It looked so…"

"…violent?" Shepard finished gravely.

"Yes," was Roahn's meek affirmation.

"Does it seem clearer now? Why I was so averse to having you use a gun in the first place? I was trying to give you the chance at a normal life—the kind of life that I never got to have. The very moment I became an adult, I enlisted in the service, knowing that I had no other direction for my life. Your mother and I were determined to make sure that you had more options than we did while growing up. We wanted you to choose your own path, not to pressure you into doing something you might regret later on. But we agreed that we were definitely not going to have our pasts influence you into being a soldier. So, we got rid of our weapons, moved to this little corner of the galaxy. We wanted to start over from scratch."

Shepard looked despairingly over his shoulder back at where the bodies lay. "Shows what _we_ knew, apparently."

"But I still don't understand. Why do these people want to hurt us? Hurt _you?_ "

The two of them had reached a shallow cliff, which they easily hopped down. They were now walking at a more harried pace, keeping a little closer to the road where the terrain was less unpredictable, less jagged. The ocean was still less than half a mile away to their right, providing a constant source of cold air that fed their strength as they continued to make their way towards the city.

"I think that such a story might be a little complex for someone like you, Roahn," Shepard said as he hurried along. "But I probably do owe you a proper explanation, don't I?"

Roahn said nothing but allowed a small smile. She let this moment where her father recognized her emotional maturity breathe a little, letting it seep into her psyche.

"Those men back there were mercenaries," Shepard said. "People that don't deserve your tears or pity. They belonged to a private military corporation known as Chimera."

"How could you tell they belonged to this Chimera?" Roahn asked.

"Because of the armor they wore. Red and black armor is the uniform all Chimera operatives have. They're loyal to no one, only their contract. In this case, I'm pretty positive that they've been hired by a certain senator in the Alliance as a way to coerce me into cooperating with a certain investigation that he's been overseeing for more than a decade now. Chimera's main goal now is to make my— _our_ —lives a living hell, to pound us into submission so that I will finally surrender myself into Alliance custody."

Something didn't make sense to Roahn and she did a miniature double-take.

"Wait, why would the Alliance send mercenaries after you? You're a hero to the Alliance! They can't hurt _you!_ They're your people!"

Shepard politely chuckled. "I'm fairly certain that they stopped being ' _my people'_ the very day I left with Tali to live here. I told you that I just… stepped away from everything. Gave it all up for a new beginning. As it stands, I did sort of perform a faux pas to this senator's face by up and leaving Earth out of the blue. Walked right out in the middle of his panel when I was supposed to be giving my testimony to the official record. I guess he never let go of that grudge for all these years and is trying to give out a little payback. Damn Raynor Larsen."

Roahn's foot stubbed against a rock and she stumbled in place. She lamented her clumsiness—she was already being enraptured by Shepard's introspection that she was not watching where she was going. Shepard stopped in place to make sure that Roahn was all right.

"But why would you leave to begin with?" Roahn caught up to her father and the two of them proceeded at their brisk pace. "If a senator specifically summoned you to speak, isn't not complying with such an order illegal?"

"I guess you can call what I had a crisis of faith. I knew that if I was not going to comply with Senator Larsen's request that he could try and arrest me, as he did have that authority. I had hoped that, considering my contributions to the Alliance, that someone would have laid a pardon down for me in that time, but apparently that hasn't been the case. But if I had testified, then I would have been undoing all that I had worked to accomplish during the war. Larsen wanted my recollections on my deals with our Council allies, knowing that if they came to the public light he could use that information to exert political pressure on them and to wrest more control of the Council for humanity. If he had found out what I know, like the attempt by the salarians to undercut the krogan, and the hording of prothean technology by the asari, among others, then… honestly I don't know what could happen but I do know that I was not going to divulge anything to empower an individual as blatantly transparent as Raynor Larsen. All I knew that the implications made me sick to my stomach. I _could not_ talk, that was the only thing my gut was telling me to do."

"So…" Roahn mused, "…if the salarians and the asari did do things that were illegal, why not tell someone who could do something about it? They broke the law, not you!"

Shepard emphatically gave a shake of his head. "That's not the point, Roahn. Reality is not black and white. There's more to it than good and evil. Sometimes you have to do the wrong things for the right reasons. I never testified to Larsen because I knew that reopening old wounds, right at a moment of healing for the galaxy, would only serve to create more conflict again. I was not going to be a part of that. And… there was another reason, too."

"What was it?"

"I was done with fighting after the war had ended. My life back then had been divided up into two places where I could be found the most: on the battlefield, or in a hospital. After I finished healing from my wounds back on Earth, I vowed to put aside my role as a commander aside for good. I was never going to put myself in a position where I would have to choose anything over my family. I wanted out. I wanted it to end. Testifying would have forestalled me reaching that normality. It would have kept me apart from my family. I could not bear to let that happen. I threw away everything for Tali… and for you."

"For… _me?_ " Roahn was confused. "But… you left Earth three years before I was born. What do you mean you did it for me?"

Now Shepard gave a grin as the two of them proceeded to hike on in the night. "Because you were always part of our plan, Roahn. That's why."

* * *

As dawn began to break out over the desert, the light splintered through the sea mist to reveal the desolate world that was replete with a natural wonder. Thorny bushes brushed through the fog, scraping at the clouds as the opaque covering was slowly evaporated away, ate upon with gusto by the heat of the sun. The very ground, having cooled during the night, found itself starting to warm up again, the flat and dusty rocks immediately grabbing onto the thermals, making them hot to the touch.

The new day found Shepard and Roahn less than three miles away from the capital city, still well outside of civilization in terms of their proximity to any urban center, but from where they had started, the both of them had achieved a minor miracle.

Shepard and Roahn had barely stopped their trek ever since they had set out from the house, choosing to hike on through the night, pausing only for brief water breaks. Their overall path had not been as straightforward as they would have liked, but Shepard felt that, in order to lessen the risk of getting themselves into encounters like the one last night, they had to make their route a bit more winding through the hills, a bit less predictable. The strategy appeared to have worked, because none of them saw any more Chimera troops in pursuit, to their relief. The convoluted trail that Shepard was leading the two of them on did add at least another mile to their overall journey, though. Roahn's legs were aching something fierce but she still had a near bottomless source of energy to draw from—she still felt fine, all things considered.

"Were hikes like this common at all in your training?" Roahn asked as they stumbled down a particularly steep and rocky incline, her first question in hours.

Shepard looked at the quickly brightening sky in thought. "In the Alliance, sure. It was a favorite exercise among the DIs to have the grunts haul ass—excuse me—um… _go as fast as they can_ up a particularly steep mountainous course. They had this one area in the Rocky Mountains that was used quite often for that sort of work—a place filled with trails and tough challenges for us recruits to overcome. It was our own natural obstacle course."

"That was for your enlistment or when you became an N7?"

"Heh, no, that was just for my regular service. The start of my special forces training was done at the ICA over in Rio de Janeiro, a rather large town in the southern hemisphere on Earth. The rest of the training for the other 'N' ranks were done off planet."

Roahn dared to try her luck a little further. "What did you have to do be an N7, dad?"

"Hmph," Shepard grunted as he kicked a small rock down the path as they neared closer and closer to the road. "The clichéd answer would be that I had to be the best to even get the rank of an N7. But that description is not all that much of an exaggeration, to be honest. Hell, even training for the lower 'N' ranks are so tough that the people who wash out aren't at all ashamed. It's a course that is designed to be so extreme that a very low passing rate is altogether expected. And you can't technically pass the 'N' courses until you attain your N7 rank. That's the only insignia you can wear on the field. The folks over in the ICT don't want to have it look like they accept mediocrity."

Both of them now wandered onto the path since a particularly large cliff and unpassable had risen up on their left, forcing them to take the road well-traveled. Waves smashed onto the rock wall down below on their right, sending up a huge plume of spray, creating thousands of tiny rainbows to glitter in the morning sun, coating the two with mist.

"As for the courses themselves," Shepard continued as he wiped the salt water off his face, "you start out by training for more than 20 hours a day; you lead combat teams through a designated course that has been designed to test your knack for strategy as well as your mental state. The other ranks focus on more specialized courses, such as zero-g combat, jetpack maneuvering, combat diving, foreign linguistics, instruction in several different forms of martial arts, and even basic trauma care for all Council species."

Shepard's eyes squinted slightly as he lagged in step so that Roahn could be in sync with his gait alongside him. The girl stared up at her father, momentarily forgetting to breathe.

"All the training," Shepard said, "all the work that I did… everything was designed to make me—make us—better soldiers. It snagged us in, tempted us with the promise that we could make a difference. An N7. The only rank more respected than that was a Spectre, eh? But back then, the rank made no difference to me. I simply felt that it was my duty to devote myself to honing my natural skills. I had no other plans beyond the military, so I figured that I better make the most of things. Then life decided to take me down a winding road, one that I had very little control over, that started when I touched that prothean beacon back on Eden Prime. I didn't know it yet, but at that moment I became destined for a role outside of the unambitious plans that I'd made for myself. It led me to the ranks of the Spectres. Led me to fight the Reapers. And, of course, it led me to your mother."

Roahn absorbed all of this, stifling down her urge to be a usual chatterbox.

"Do you miss being a soldier?" Roahn finally asked.

It took a moment for Shepard to ponder. "Parts of it," he admitted. "Little bits and fragments. But I don't want that life anymore. There's nothing there that I want. Twice in my life I've fought for the Alliance and twice I've been thrown to the wolves for my contributions. I won't give my services to anyone else anymore. If the Alliance wouldn't defend me against Larsen, against Cerberus, then what guarantee could I have that they would defend me a third time?"

A nearby rodent chirped, momentarily drawing the attention of the two before they continued on, albeit at a more cautious pace.

"I see what you mean," Roahn scratched at her arm as she looked away to the side.

"Even _dying_ for the Alliance didn't help my cause. After breaking from Cerberus, I was treated as a criminal for months when I returned to the force. I was only reinstated out of necessity when the Reapers arrived."

Shepard had to halt in place when he realized that Roahn had stopped walking, his heels sending up dust clouds.

"Roahn?" he asked cautiously as he beheld the shocked expression in his kid's eyes.

"Say that again," Roahn lifted a trembling finger.

Shepard blinked. "Which part?"

"You said… you said that you _died_ for the Alliance. What did you mean by that?"

 _Oh, fucking hell_.

Shepard nearly slapped himself upside the head. Now look what his big mouth had done! How could have he been so stupid to blather this aspect out loud?! Of course he would not have told Roahn that he had technically died just yet. He and Tali had not figured that Roahn had been old enough to understand. After all, how does one tell your kid that you _died_ and was subsequently brought back to life?!

Well, he was going to have to come up with a way to break it to Roahn _now_.

"Ah… _dammit_ ," Shepard sighed sheepishly. "I completely forgot that you didn't know that."

"Dad?" Roahn's voice was rapidly rising in pitch. "What do you mean you _died?_ "

Shepard hung his head for a few seconds as he placed his hands on his hips to anchor himself in place.

"I meant exactly what I said, Roahn," Shepard mustered a pathetic look. "A while back, thirteen or fourteen years ago, I was… sort of… killed in action."

If Roahn's visor would have shattered open from the sheer stress of her tangible shock, it very well would have.

" _Wh-What?_ "

"It was a surprise attack in the Terminus systems. A rogue enemy showed up without warning. They destroyed my ship. I tried to get as many of the crew out of the ship as I could. I ended up spaced. My suit had been breached and I lost oxygen. I was dead in minutes."

Reducing what had been probably the most stressful period in Shepard's life down to a series of blurbs made Shepard realize that he was boiling the affair down to seem like only a minor annoyance instead of the catastrophic event that it had been. Most people would react to the news of someone being resurrected with a sense of awe and wonder. To Shepard it had not been so glamorous.

 _Tali would have done a better job of explaining this than me_ , Shepard thought. He knew his description to Roahn had been a pitiful recounting and he had to concede the fact that there was a chance that Roahn might not believe him due to his perceived nonchalance.

"You wanted to know how I got to be who I am," Shepard pointed out, wishing that Roahn would just say _something_. "Well, this is what happened."

Still, to Shepard's growing frustration, Roahn remained silent.

"I daresay nothing on the extranet mentioned _that_ little tidbit, I take it?" he tried.

"No!" Roahn finally blurted out. "They did not!"

 _Figures_ , Shepard thought. The details behind his "resurrection" were shady at best and would certainly offer up a ton of scrutiny should it become public. Shepard figured that the Alliance had been suppressing the details Cerberus' little experiment all this time and had waving his so-called death off as time merely spent in a coma.

 _If only I could get in touch with Miranda_ , Shepard thought of the prim and proper ex-Cerberus agent, the one responsible for heading the project that had brought him back to life. _I could use her testimony to confirm the story to Roahn._

"Do you even believe me?" Shepard asked Roahn.

Thrown for a bit, Roahn scrambled to come up with an answer.

"It… it… it just doesn't seem… _possible_."

"What does? The fact that someone can be brought back to life after being dead for two years?"

"I don't even know _how_ to believe it."

"Even I have trouble with that sometimes," Shepard admitted as he knelt down by Roahn. Reaching out, he gently took Roahn's hand in his own, squeezing her limb gently so that she could feel his grip through her suit. "I can't prove it to you, but I know where the proof lies. Maybe someday, not now, you'll be able to decide for yourself whether I'm telling the truth or not. But as for how it was done? Time, patience, and a whole lot of cybernetics. Two years. Four billion credits. My entire skeleton and skin reconstructed from the ground up. But it wasn't at the Alliance's expense, but Cerberus'."

"Cerberus," Roahn repeated. "The pro-human black ops organization."

"The very same. They got a hold of my body and wanted to have me fight for them. Perhaps use me eventually as a figurehead for the organization. I went along with them for a while after I woke up, mostly because our assumed goals were one and the same. But the rope that Cerberus had allotted me still had its limits. I eventually left them after a certain point, knowing that continuing to be associated with that organization would only be benefiting Cerberus instead of the galaxy as a whole."

Closing his free hand over Roahn's, Shepard made sure to stare deeply into Roahn's eyes, to give her the clear impression that he was telling the earnest truth.

"I can't make you understand now, but I can help you do so over time."

 _For my sake and for yours_.

Having no choice offered her right now other than to accept the man's word, Roahn gave a dim nod. "O-… o-… okay, dad."

"Trust me," Shepard managed that clumsy smile one more time as he patted the side of Roahn's helmet for reassurance. "I'm not as crazy as you think I am. In fact, I'm-,"

The noise in Shepard's throat fluttered and died midway towards becoming a tangible word. Roahn did not need to ask for clarification—she heard it too. Off in the distance. Echoing off the canyon walls, fluttering in between mountains of dusty rocks and curtains of drying vegetation.

A harsh whine.

A sound that did not come from an organic mouth.

High-pitched, annoying, and increasing in volume.

They were about to have company. _Again_.

Shepard perked his head up, his trained ear tuned carefully to the noise. Filled with unease, he was able to send the brief surge of adrenaline back down into his spewing gut for it to simmer. It took two seconds for him to decipher the source of the approaching sound, one of his hands still outstretched to prevent his daughter from jiggling about.

"Hover-cycle," Shepard rattled off, like he was reading from a textbook. "Single-seater. Twenty seconds until intercept." To Roahn, Shepard turned, his voice slipping down an octave, right into the tone she had associated with a hero thought to be long gone. " _Hide_."

Roahn did not need to be told twice. There was a handy little nook dug into the cliff face, mere feet away from the road. It was draped by the shadow caused from the overhead sun, creating a perfect dark corner. Roahn wedged herself deep into the cranny to the point where she thought she was going to be entombed by the surrounding rock. Shepard also backed into the corner with her, shielding her with his broader frame as he stepped out of sight from the road.

Keeping his eyes peeled upon the smoothened path, Shepard slowly knelt down and plucked up a rock slightly bigger than his fist. The rock left a fine coating of dust on Shepard's palm as he squeezed it tight in his grip.

Shepard took a second to peek out from cover, affirming to himself that his ear was not spinning any tall tales. From about a half a mile up the road, a red and black armored Chimera trooper came whizzing around the bend on his hover-cycle, a dirtied metallic contraption that looked like someone had fused a captain's chair to a booster rocket from a Hammerhead tank. A scout on patrol. No idea if he was pursuing Shepard specifically or simply going along his assigned route. The cycle itself was controlled by a pair of handlebars and pedals fused together in an I-shape. Sunlight flared against the paneling of the cycle that was not covered in mud and grime and Shepard yanked himself back into the shadow of the cliff's alcove as he counted down the seconds in his head.

"We could use his ride," Shepard whispered, mostly to himself, but Roahn understood then intent behind his musings. Shepard gave the rock in his hand a brief toss, causing the stone to rise up a couple of inches in the air before comfortably falling back into the human's hand.

The whine of the cycle's booster engines was progressing to an inhuman roar now. The pitch was climbing higher and higher. The very air seemed to vibrate. Roahn could feel micro-shakes trembling through the cliff in the corner she was stuffed into.

The hover-cycle kept on screaming towards their position.

 _What are you_ … Roahn was about to say.

Her father lifted his arm, cocking his elbow back as he positioned the stone just behind his ear.

The scream of the engine turned into a howl.

Roahn felt herself lock up.

And just as it felt like the sound was about to bowl them over, she saw her father move.

Shepard darted out from the corner in a split-second, his arm already in motion as his elbow began to rotate downward. His eyes automatically locked onto the head of the cycle's rider, keeping his body on a swivel and aimed directly at his intended target. As soon as the angle of his elbow became forty-five degrees from parallel, Shepard opened his fingers, and kinetic energy gracefully took the stone away. The missile shot through the air, propelled by the massive force that had been exerted upon it in the throw. It sped over the ground, spiraling very much like a bioti-ball as it met its end destination.

The Chimera rider, not having known where Shepard was, had been caught completely off guard when he had seen his quarry just jump right out in front of the road from the cliff wall. The trooper's first instinct was to brake, which was already being applied by the time Shepard had thrown the rock at him. The second instinct of the trooper was to fumble for his rifle, filled with stun rounds, so that he could pump Shepard full of a tranquilizing dose.

Around that second part was when things started to get a little complicated.

The rock crashed perfectly on the front of the trooper's helmet, cracking it, and sending the shattered casing directly back into his skull. The broken shards of helmet did not puncture the skin of the trooper, but the force of the stone's throw exerted itself upon the man and the combination of the hit itself plus the speed at which the trooper had been travelling caused a catastrophic combination. The trooper's head was bounced in all directions, causing his brain to smack through the inner fluid cushioning and directly into the thick bone of his skull. That gave the trooper a concussion and he lost all motor functions, which meant that he let go of his tranq gun, which hit the ground and bounced end over end, scratching the waxed finish, until it tipped off the edge of the road and into the churning sea below.

Normally having a concussion is a bad thing all on its own, but obtaining a concussion while operating a moving vehicle at the same time exponentially raises the level of injury for the afflicted. The trooper, now thoroughly disoriented from having a rock being thrown into his face at Mach 2, slipped out of his chair with a groan and hit the dirt hard. He rolled several times on the road, smearing his armor with a chalky brown color, but the momentum of his fall was carrying him too far at too fast of a speed.

In an instant, Roahn realized where the trooper was headed.

She let out a wordless cry of horror as the trooper tumbled and tumbled until finally… there was no more ground for him to roll upon. The body seemed to have a split-second where it defied gravity itself, only for the laws of physics to reclaim him once again as the trooper rolled off the edge of the cliff.

It was a thirty-meter drop down to the sea, to a bed where jagged rocks, sharp as spears, awaited to tear the body to pieces.

There was no sound from the trooper as he fell through the air.

The waves consumed the impact.

Roahn let out the breath she had been holding in a slow gasp, her entire body shuddering from the effort.

" _Keelah_ ," she could only say as she stared at the spot where the trooper had been last seen on the ground.

"Us or them," Shepard simply responded as he walked out into the road, no longer hiding anymore, now headed for the abandoned hover-cycle. "I won't choose anyone else over you, Roahn. Remember that. If people have to get hurt because of that fact, then so be it."

The hover-cycle's failsafe had engaged right after it detected the Chimera trooper's hands leaving the handlebars and it had automatically applied the brakes on full to bring the vehicle to an immediate stop in less than three seconds. A deceleration that fast would have popped the eyeballs out of the driver… if the driver had not been deposited onto the ground beforehand, that is.

Swinging a leg over the hover-cycle, Shepard placed his hands upon the handlebars, causing the vehicle to give a throaty roar before simmering down to a cat-like growl. The cycle rumbled, its vibrations subtle. Purple light glowed from the booster and the cycle swayed in place as the anti-gravity generators began to recalibrate themselves.

"Well?" Shepard asked as he beheld Roahn simply standing in place next to the cycle. "Are you going to get on? In case you've forgotten, it would be good for us to get off this planet as soon as possible."

"I know," Roahn responded acidly. "I'm just thinking."

Now Shepard took his hands off the handlebars, momentarily putting the cycle into its idle mode, causing the booster to make a whimpering whistle as the power left it.

"Thinking of what?"

"All these years… all this time…" Roahn said distantly. "There's still so much on Rannoch that I have yet to see. And I might not get another chance." Locking in her gaze at Shepard, Roahn took a breath. "Dad, I want to make one last stop before we leave."

"Time is of the essence, Roahn. Why would we stop when we need to put as much distance between us and Chimera right now?"

"The place I'm thinking of isn't far. It should only be a couple hours' ride with that hover-bike. Dad…" Roahn's confident voice flowed through her vocabulator. "…I'm holding you to your promise. I want to understand what you did. Take me… take me to the cliff where you killed the Reaper. Take me to where you and mom saved Rannoch."

There was an extremely noticeable pause as Shepard gave the request some deliberation. Internally, he was facing a terrible conflict of his own right now. It was too easy for him to close his eyes and imagine that Tali herself was standing right next to him, glaring deep into his soul with those piercing eyes of hers, daring him to deny their daughter her natural right to know everything. Shepard gave an unnoticeable shiver and opened his eyes again, the hidden specter failing to materialize, leaving only a child all alone next to him.

His child.

His family.

All she wanted was to know what made him the "Commander." _The Commander_. Yes… what really was it that made him that person? Shepard was discovering that the answer was slipping away from him with each successive day. It fled his mind, his presence, causing him to drown in his confusion, lost on his own journey for answers.

Maybe… they could find out together.

That way they would not have to be afraid any longer.

Clarity then slammed into Shepard, a light blasting on within his head.

With a determined look, Shepard clasped the handlebars for the final time, kicking the engine back onto full, letting the bellowing noise rage over the cliffs and across the sea with a joyful echo.

"All right, then," Shepard acquiesced with a knowing smile, extending a hand to help his daughter up on the cycle behind him. "So, you coming or not?"

Heart fluttering with anticipation, Roahn immediately clasped her father's hand.

* * *

 **A/N: All right, we're coming to the end of the first act of _Cenotaph_. Now, we've got another adventure awaiting us! It'll be fun to see where this goes.**

 **I know it sounds like I'm repeating myself, but I'm more than elated from the feedback and overall reception I've been getting from you guys. Honestly, you all are the best. Please, keep it up!**

 **One other thing, I'd take a look at RedCenturionG's (formerly ArchReaperN7) newest story, _Equilibrium: Crusader_. The first chapter was released just a few days ago and it features a MShep/Tali relationship (in which she's alive this time, not dead) in a post-war Mass Effect universe. If you like _Cenotaph_ , I'm sure you're bound to like _Equilibrium_. Go give it a look!**

 **Playlist:**

 **The Geth Chassis (Old Friend): "Friend from the Past" by Marc Streitenfeld (Themes by Jerry Goldsmith) from the film _Prometheus_**

 **Grass Attack/Shepard Wins: "Nikolai Blows" by John Debney from the film _Predators_**

 **Rannoch Dawn (Cenotaph Main Theme): "Mars Red Planet" by Graeme Revell from the film _Red Planet_**

 **Hover-Cycle/A New Path: "In the Beginning" by Hans Zimmer, Lorne Balfe, and Lisa Gerrard from the TV miniseries _The Bible_**


	8. Chapter 8: Apostatize

" _Mr. Koenig, it may not be the most pertinent of matters at this point, but I am somewhat conflicted, as are the rest of my colleagues, about your bizarre social networking habits. As an official government contractor, you have been warned against devising prompts or posts on the extranet that many might see as noticeably partisan or inflammatory. Yet, as this brief post history shows, you have not been following those guidelines."  
_ Sen. McCullough, UNAS

" _Honestly Senator, I really don't think-,"  
_ Erich Koenig, CEO – Chimera

"— _Let me interrupt you for a moment, here, if I may. Because some of these posts are alarming at best. I quote, 'Why are we letting turians run freely around our cities? The government should be protecting us from those spiny rapists.' Unquote. I'm fairly concerned that you, the CEO of a private military corporation, is insinuating that all turians are 'spiny rapists' in a single, unprompted snippet. I'm just curious, what exactly motivated you to make that association about turians in the first place?"  
_ Sen. McCullough, UNAS

" _Senator, that quote was taken entirely out of context—"  
_ Erich Koenig, CEO – Chimera

"— _Here are some more examples from your library emphasizing that there is a clear pattern to your posting that does not require additional context to conceive: 'It's unnatural that the asari have this ability to corrupt the minds of humans in this day and age. Their practicing in their unsophisticated ways should be restricted immediately. Ban all asari from human establishments!' 'I'm getting tired of having to listen to all these fucking salarians talk. Fucking speak normally, for fuck's sake!' Mr. Koenig, not only are these statements provocative and dangerous, they are also representative of a closed mind. Furthermore, you offer nothing in the way of solutions when you make these suppositions in the first place. You're only broadcasting unintelligent bigotry."  
_ Sen. McCullough, UNAS

" _Bigotry is in the eye of the beholder, Senator."  
_ Erich Koenig, CEO – Chimera

" _Mr. Koenig, try to refrain from making nonsensical statements."  
_ Sen. McCullough, UNAS

* * *

 _Berlin, European Union_

The city. A grid of concrete canyons spiraling out of control, following pathways derived centuries ago. Landlocked and painfully stubborn routes funneling life through a calculated and intricate artificial heart all in service of the car, an outdated relic that amazingly still held relevance today.

But as the city grew, the car remained less and less viable as a means of transportation. Roads became congested, impossible to traverse. The more bodies that inhabited the city, the more vehicles supplanted themselves to the road. Berliners had long tried to mitigate this growing infestation by doubling down on alternate modes: the train, the bike, or by walking. Sooner or later, such staunch progress would reach the end limit of their returns, forcing the infrastructure to be continually modified to serve the car, to surrender to the car.

It was this effect that was impacting Admiral Steven Hackett right at this moment.

Stuffed into the back of a military-issued sedan, Hackett grumbled in what had to be the twelfth time in ten minutes that traffic was particularly worse today than usual in Berlin. While traveling in the middle of downtown Berlin was always a nightmare at any time of the day, it seemed especially bad right now because ever since he had set off from his starting point, Hackett had done nothing but sit in start-stop traffic for at least half an hour. He was not the one driving the sedan—being an Admiral meant that he had a driver ferry him around all the time—but the constant shifts in movement were beginning to make Hackett sick. Now was one of those times where he actually missed driving a vehicle himself.

How long had it been since he had actually been behind a wheel? Ten years? Twenty? Time eluded Hackett as he got older.

It was a bright and sunny day in Berlin, although Hackett could not tell from where he was. All of the roads in the city, and in most European cities, were double-decker—the uppermost level being an express route with the lower level corresponding to the surface access. Hackett's vehicle was on the lower level, draping him in a constant blanket of shadow, preventing him from seeing the sky.

Had his destination been a little outside the city, Hackett would have opted to take a shuttle, or something that could actually _fly_. Unfortunately, because of the government's tendency to cling to old buildings that had been built so many years ago without a single thought to the miraculous wonder of flying vehicles, the only way into the city was by a traditional four-wheeled car.

 _Not to mention that Berlin was mostly intact after the war ended_ , Hackett thought sourly. That was why the Alliance had chosen this city as the newest site to base their government—the infrastructure that had still been standing enabled reconstruction efforts to be completed rapidly, which helped in the restoration of a working civilization without any severe gaps in governance. But the outdated architecture of the city was not so conducive to the rapid technological improvements that had been made in the past century, preventing such conveniences such as shuttle service from being viable in a place like this. What a shame.

The car jerked again and Hackett lurched forward uncomfortably. The driver had been apologizing for the erratic starts and stops since they had set off, but Hackett knew it was not his fault. Something was holding up the queue, judging by the sea of red lights stretching on endlessly down the avenue, warping the darkened tier with a crimson hue.

Hackett frowned as he tried to settle in once again into the plush interior of the sedan. Half an hour wasted. Had he known it would have taken this long, he would have just walked. Hell, he could have rented a bike. His destination had only been a little more than two miles away from the intelligence building near the main rail station where he had initially set off. But the security agencies responsible for escorting important government figures, like Hackett, did not like to have admirals just walking out and about in broad daylight—they felt that was an open invitation for a bevy of risks to fall upon them. So, Hackett was stuck in this car, relegated to sitting on his ass and letting the world pass him by, trapped in the queue.

The car itself, a BMW FC780 (Fuel Cell), was stocked well, but Hackett did not partake in any of the amenities, which included a vidscreen in the rear headrest, a small refrigerator in the middle seat, and massaging seats. Hackett was used to the Spartan mindset that had accompanied every single military vessel that he had ever set foot on. Minimalist trappings and uncomfortable seats had been part of his livelihood since the beginning. This car was like a swanky resort compared to his quarters on a standard Alliance frigate.

As the car finally crept forward to turn on another road, the driver angled his head back and announced that their destination was within sight.

 _Finally_ , Hackett thought, but he kept his mouth shut, not wanting to be rude.

The route they had taken from the intelligence building had been a convoluted one to begin with, mostly because the reports that the security group had been getting was that there was some sort of public demonstration blocking all the normal routes. The details of the demonstration were a little vague to Hackett as no one could tell him exactly what was going on, but the usual route had to be altered slightly to accommodate the detours.

 _A lot of good that did_ , Hackett mused.

"We're coming up on that demonstration now, Admiral," the driver announced from the front. "Do you want me to turn on the lights?"

The vehicle had the usual assortment of police lights that could be activated to clear out the traffic in times of need, but the security staff did not like using them in cities as they thought it drew too much attention to the car in question. Besides, what good would the lights do right now? Every single lane of traffic was bumper-to-bumper. No wiggle room whatsoever.

"No need," Hackett responded as he settled into his seat in the back. "It'll only be another five minutes. The car has bulletproof windows, so there's no danger."

The car passed a large shopping center before it entered Potsdam Square, a relatively wide open area that was full of trendy stores and places for people to hang out.

It was also a good place to hold a protest, as Hackett could see as his vehicle approached, because every inch of the sidewalks in front of the stores in the square were packed head to toe with people of all shapes and sizes. Human. Turian. Asari. Hackett even spotted a quarian in the melee.

Diversity in action. The entire spectrum of color and species all churning in a chorus of discombobulated voices, crying and aching in a throbbing tempo.

Hackett leaned forward, concentrating onto the chanting that the protestors were reciting. He was struck at the sheer differences between the people in the crowd. Even after the show of unity devised from all the species during the Reaper War, it always gave Hackett pause whenever he saw such open displays of acceptance, completely disregarding their incongruent origins.

Different though the people might be, one thing they all had in common, the one thing that clearly kept them together, was that they were undoubtedly pissed off.

German police officers were standing by, having cordoned off the sidewalks from the roads with holographic barriers, but otherwise the actual protest was not progressing violently (Hackett was pleased at the show of solidarity). What the people were doing, aside from raising a whole lot of noise, was simply standing in place, raising their handmade signs proudly while shouting their impassioned chants for change.

"What are they protesting?" Hackett asked the driver.

"Military privatization," the driver curtly answered. "They're a bit peeved at the amount of collateral damage PMCs have been doing and are calling for more government oversight."

"PMC protest, eh? Well, the senatorial building is a good place to start. These people wouldn't happen to be protesting at Chimera's headquarters on the other side of the city as well, right?"

"They certainly are, sir. Alliance Intelligence is reporting that an ever larger protest has spilled out into the streets in front of Chimera HQ. Road access is completely cut off over there."

"How have the protestors been behaving?"

"As far as I've heard, quite calmly. Berlin Police has reported no injuries, no signs of property damage."

"I'll be damned," Hackett murmured in admiration as he leaned near the window to read some of the signs.

One read, _HAVE YOU LEARNED NOTHING?_

 _RACISM HURTS US ALL_ , another projected.

 _SAME SHIT, DIFFERENT CENTURY_

 _I HATE CROWDS BUT I HATE RACISTS MORE_

 _THE ONLY PERSON I WANT FUCKING ME IS MY TURIAN WIFE_

 _I'M MISSING THE WORLD CUP FOR THIS PROTEST, YOU ASSHOLES!_

The creative billboards went on and on down the block. Hackett leaned back so that no one from the crowd could see him smiling, despite the tinted windows. Regardless of how this protest was a true representation of the public, he was proud of the fact that everyone was flexing their natural right to dissent the government's usage of hiring PMCs. Hackett held no love for Chimera at all. He felt that they were all a bunch of thugs that were loyal to only their mission and not beholden to the bigger picture that the Alliance was trying to uphold: win the hearts and minds of the citizens. If it were up to him, he'd rip up the contract the Alliance made with the corporation in a heartbeat. He also was in agreement that Chimera had simply killed too many innocent civilians to justify its existence as the Alliance's hired defenders. They had now unintentionally become its attack dog. And the observant members of the public were mad as hell about that.

After all, what sort of foe were they fighting now that justified the use of an attack dog in the first place?

If he were not in the service, Hackett would almost certainly have joined the crowd in the plaza, or at least have given an endorsement of some kind. However, his rank did not behoove him to take such a staunch sectarian line when the protocol was for him to lack the appearance of any bias. As it was, Hackett gave an unseen nod to the protesters, one of admiration, as the car finally inched out of the single lane of traffic and entered a court next to a very old, but very impressive, building.

"We're here, sir," the driver said.

Hackett had shouldered open the door while the driver had been mid-sentence, despite the fact that it was usually the courtesy of the driver to open the door for Hackett. But Hackett had spent too much time cooped up in the back of that car. He was not about to waste any more time if he could help it.

The _Bundesrat_ building was a remnant of the old German republic, stagnant as the roots of modernization were built up around it. It remained a symbol of power and progress in the three centuries since it had been built, the home of the Alliance's senators. Skyscrapers boxed the building in on the left and the right, keeping the sun away, but the _Bundesrat_ was an imposing specimen on its own, taking inspirational cues from both British and Greek heritages in its architecture.

Hackett swiftly pushed his way through the entrance, easily shouldering aside the heavy oak doors. There was no receptionist inside to confirm if he had an appointment—security scanners had been built into the walls to ease any foot traffic and to expedite the overall process. Thick, tan stone, polished to a gleaming sheen, covered the floor, the columns, and even the steps of the stairway right in front of him. His heels made a loud clacking sound that had a wet echo to it—stone was great at keeping such sounds alive.

Security guards, all in Alliance outfits, roamed the halls but none stopped to check Hackett. The admiral's insignia upon his cap and chest most likely had some part to play in that. Hackett quickly ascended the stairs to the second floor and hooked an immediate right, making his way into a long hallway where all the doors looked the same. That had been a deliberate choice from the original architects, to make sure that the people working in this building were all on equal footing. Hackett knew which door he was headed to, having memorized the number beforehand. He did not have to stop to consult a map or accost a guard for directions.

And it was right… here.

Hackett made sure to maximize the amount of noise he made ever since the moment he turned the heavy brass doorknob, to emphasize the anger that he was now allowing to show its face. Being trapped in the traffic had allowed him a great deal of time to let his rage simmer. The interior of the office was partitioned by a secretary's desk, where a rather gaunt woman with gray streaks in her hair was sitting, staring blankly at a console screen. Hackett could spot the door to the actual office beyond, knowing that the person he sought was still inside.

The secretary opened her mouth at first, perhaps to momentarily give Hackett pause, but she did nothing as soon as her eyes recognized Hackett's face before she took note of the man's insignia. Giving a meek blink, the secretary slowly slunk her eyes back over to her screen, an indication to Hackett that he had the authority to do whatever he felt like around here.

That was good, because Hackett was in no mood for such petty games.

He barged into the office noisily, causing the old-fashioned wooden door to bang against the wall with an uncaring clunking noise (automatic doors were apparently shunned in this building). As Hackett expected, Raynor Larsen was sitting upright in his desk, his eyebrows only bumping upward in mild surprise, while he was apparently in the middle of a voice call, judging by the wavelength icon on the holo-console. The craggy senator paused mid-sentence and gave Hackett a searing once-over before he gave the slightest turn of his head back to his workstation, never taking his eyes off the admiral.

"We'll have to continue this conversation another time," Larsen replied to the recipient, who would be forever clueless as to why the call had been cut in the first place.

Hackett had never been in Larsen's office before and he was annoyed to find out that the senator had prime real estate in terms of a view. Larsen had a window that looked directly out into the plaza below—meaning that he certainly knew that there was a protest occurring in the streets just meters away—but was soundproofed to keep any excess noise out. The office itself was also remarkably spacious. Clearly Larsen did not feel the need to occupy his office with frivolous items, but Hackett was dismayed to learn that the desk that Larsen was just so happening to use was a perfect copy of the _Resolute_ desk that presidents back in America used in their state office. Somehow, Hackett was not all that surprised at Larsen's show of audacity.

Finished with his call, Larsen leaned forward over his desk, his hands clasped together. "Admiral? A remarkable surprise," he stated, a perpetual grin starting to line his face. "I'm sure that I didn't have you on my agenda for today—my secretary would have reminded me—but I can always make an exception for you."

Larsen's feigned ignorance was already peeving Hackett to no end. Incensed, but still remarkably remaining level-headed, Hackett did not rise to Larsen's bait. Instead, Hackett just activated his omni-tool and rummaged around for a document, which he located and projected in front of Larsen's face.

"Court documents, Senator," Hackett coldly explained. "Filed this morning without much fanfare. Completely under the radar. They've been signed by _you_. _'Indictment: The Grand Jury for the Systems Alliance charges the following individual, Jonathan Ryan Shepard, with the following: two counts to commit an offence against the Systems Alliance, one count of conspiracy to commit an offence against the Systems Alliance—"_

"I'm fully aware of what I wrote, Admiral," Larsen interrupted, his smirk never wavering. "I don't need you to read it all back to me when I was responsible for every single word in that document."

"Every word in a thirty page indictment?" Hackett pressed.

"The court prefers the charging party to be thorough in their investigation."

Beside himself, it took all of Hackett's strength to not launch into a string of expletives. "You… partisan _hack_."

"Careful, Admiral," Larsen hissed. "Associating yourself with Shepard is not going to help you in the long run. Nor is antagonizing me."

"Can you explain to me what else this looks like? In just a single stroke, without waiting for the entire senate to corroborate your plan, you've just charged the biggest hero in the galaxy of _treason_. I'm having trouble figuring out if you have some sort of master plan or if this is just plain stupidity on your part."

"This is all about justice," Larsen said as he stood from his desk, matching Hackett's height. Larsen was a tall man, able to back up his words with quite the significant backbone. "That's all this has _ever_ been about. I'm not at all happy that I've had to do this either, Hackett, but I haven't been left any other choice."

" _Admiral_ will do," Hackett said stiffly. "Do not ever again address me as 'Hackett.'"

Larsen frowned and for a moment it looked like he was going to openly defy Hackett's request, but at the last moment, he backed down and shrugged.

"Look, _Admiral_ , this is a very strange time for all of us. I just want to do my job, same as you, and like any other bureaucracy, I keep getting stonewalled in my investigations by people with their own agendas. Senators, councilors, representatives, generals, the fucking _prime minister_. This government, the Alliance, is so siloed with its information that keeping everybody on the same page is practically an impossibility. We all have our ulterior motives, Admiral, and the very nature of politics can hide our true intent. Therein, what may seem like a preposterous charge is a last-ditch effort for solidarity. For _closure_. But should I be chastised simply for trying to set the record straight? I only want Shepard to recount exactly what he witnessed during the events of the Reaper War, is all. Without his testimony, how can the public ever expect to receive any closure?"

Hackett snorted. "This is not about the public, Senator, nor is this any sort of fancy crusade between you and the inefficiencies of the government. Don't try to persuade me otherwise. The charge of treason is proof of your blindness in the matter. We both know that you have a vendetta against Shepard because your failure to depose him all those years ago stunted your political growth. In retaliation, you're simply seizing the opportunity to treat Shepard like a common criminal—strike that, you're associating him with all of the turncoats that have been vilified over the centuries. You're equating Shepard with _Benedict Arnold_ , for god's sake."

Larsen's sneer had drooped lower and lower as Hackett spoke. Finally, he seemed to have enough of Hackett's pointed remarks and turned away to the window, ignoring the aspects laid out by his verbal opponent. He gazed outside, lazily flitting his eyes across the sea of multicultural people flooding the streets and the sidewalks, fluttering their banners high as they churned against one another, feeding off of the vibrant energy from their actions. Giving a disgusted sigh, Larsen folded his hands behind his back.

"You saw the crowd on your way in, Admiral?" Larsen did not bother turning away from the window.

"They were rather hard to miss," Hackett said.

"Look at them all. Protesting a cause that they don't understand. They're so assured that they're on the right side of history, pushing back against a decision that their government made. They think that they're taking the moral high ground by rejecting our choice to outsource our military to separate contractors. All they see are the bad headlines that paint the contractors, like Chimera, in a bad light. An innocent killed here, a destroyed hospital there. The media latches onto bad news like vultures to carrion. Do they not understand that's how the news cycle works? It's easier to sell a tragedy than a success."

"Yet said contractors have been proven that they have the unfortunate tendency to create bad news at an alarming rate," Hackett countered. "Perhaps the public is simply tired of companies like Chimera painting them in a bad light. Maybe they don't want Chimera becoming more and more of a representative of their culture."

To his credit, Larsen gave a knowing nod. "While it's true that the contractors' methods have involved a whole lot more collateral damage than anticipated, no one seems to realize the necessity of their appointment. The contractors fill in the gaps where our actual military is faltering. They provide jobs for the citizens. They assure protection and order in areas of lawlessness. The government also saves millions of credits in expenditures simply by outsourcing its operations to the contractors! Fiscal responsibility _and_ a growing job market! Right there! The public should be grateful and yet… as you can see, they're unhappy. They just cannot see the entire picture here." Larsen finally turned around to look Hackett in the eye again. "I'm trying to make sure that, with Shepard, everyone will get the full story and not be blinded by what the media _chooses_ to report. I'm not letting bias get in the way of the facts."

Hackett's mouth formed a cold smile as he idly brushed his hand over Larsen's faux- _Resolute_ desk. "By besmirching Shepard's name in the process."

"Oh, I _know_ that history will be kind to Shepard down the road. His legacy is in no danger, even if he were to tell me all he knows."

"But could _you_ be trusted to be impartial to Shepard's account?" Hackett retorted. "You have an unfortunate record in the senate of releasing ill-timed reports that omit key details in order to benefit yourself and your political party. You have a history of filtering the truth in exchange for political gain. So, I ask you, why should I be trusting you to handle Shepard fairly?"

The sinister glint fled Larsen's eyes but the arrogant smirk remained. Hackett did not know it was even possible for any more coldness to be imbued into Larsen's expression, but the proof was right in front of his own eyes. Hackett recalled that former associates of Larsen had said that the senator had ice water for blood. It seems that was not an exaggeration.

"You're going back in time there, Admiral," Larsen said carefully. "I'd wager a bit too far. The public has a short memory and anything outside of their regular news cycle gets relegated to a black hole in their recollection. Besides, Shepard's resulting trial will be of interest for every side of the political spectrum. There won't be any chance for anyone to… _filter_ out anything that could possibly be damaging. With such scrutiny, there's no point in trying to stifle anything down."

"Because you somehow think that the entire story can absolve you of your methods to carry out your crusade?"

Now Larsen pointed up to the sky, his arm shaking with a perceptible rage. A feral look came in a glimpse across the man's expression, twisting his face into a fearsome grimace. "Admiral, I _know_ that the government has not been fed the entire story of what happened during the war. There are simply too many gaps in the narrative for us to accept. I _know_ that those gaps contain information that has the potential to cause quite a lot of discomfort to the other alien races… and I _know_ that Shepard was privy to that information. If we can't provide the citizens with the correct information, then we're only opening the door to chaos down the line. Muted whisperings in the hall, right down to the damned _conspiracy theorists_ making up bogus shit. Do you really want the airwaves to be flooded with that kind of crap? The stupidity of the average citizen knows no bounds, Admiral. There is no rock bottom when it comes to how stupid a citizen can seem. Fuck, I can go onto some program right now and make up a story that our government is kidnapping children to be used in some sort of secret super-soldier program, not provide any sources, and people would believe me! When we can't give our citizens answers, lies only fill in the gaps!"

"It is not my prerogative to dictate what information gets released to the public, senator," Hackett said evenly, narrowing his eyes as a brief flash of sunlight was reflected off the window of a passing car.

"Spoken like a true admiral," Larsen said mockingly. "All you can see is the military angle. I have to deal with the people day in and day out. _My_ people! Humans! What right does Shepard have to allow the narrative to be filtered?! Why does _he_ get to stay silent?"

"You had a chance to ask him. He refused."

Larsen slapped a hand firmly onto his desk, making a hollow sound. "He did not refuse, he _left!_ He turned tail at the very sign that what he knew could damage the so-called reputation of the other alien races. He protected _them_ against _us!_ Don't tell me that you don't feel the same anger I do. If that's true, then you're just as morally compromised as the people that damned Earth from the very beginning."

Hackett had the absurd idea that Larsen was suddenly going to start flying at him with fists raised. Even considering the man's age, Hackett's tactical mind had to allow for the fact that Larsen was quite the skilled brawler and would not kowtow in the face of extreme pain.

 _Larsen's like a boxer_ , one aide had mentioned to Hackett in the past. _But he never tires. Never gives an opening. You either have to stand your ground and weather the storm or be beaten into submission_.

Hackett took a breath to prevent himself from making a facial tell that Larsen could exploit. "If you are truly concerned about my convictions, Senator, then I'm sorry that you have such misgivings. What I can say is that if I had any frustrations towards the other Council races, then it would be prudent of me to shed those as soon as possible because it would not be wise for us to instigate more conflict, especially our allies."

Larsen rolled his eyes. " _Allies_. Admiral, our 'allies' took their time in posturing and negotiating, trying to cut backdoor deals with Shepard acting as our representative. Our _unassigned_ representative. Just because Shepard was a Spectre, he did not have the authority to be making military deals on our behalf. Someone gave him that power with no consideration to the legislative process. And despite Shepard supposedly succeeding in his objective of uniting our allies, it took too long in the end. When did the full support from the turians, asari, krogan, or any of the other races arrive? Not until the final days of the war. While billions of civilians were being slaughtered on this planet, each race was selfishly looking after their own interests, conserving their resources but not devoting any support to us, an _ally_ , until their own problems were slightly mitigated. The whole idea of there being a galactic 'Council' was conveniently cast aside. The rescue of Earth was delayed time and again, costing humanity so many lives."

"Some might say the cost was worth it, Senator," Hackett said in an even tone. "We won the war."

"No, we won _a_ war. You should know from humanity's history, Admiral, that there will always be another war. It's about as predictable as the sun rising every morning. Conflict has been the cornerstone of humanity's existence even before we as a species learned to walk. It's not something that can be ironed out of us. The Reaper War, while devastating, will not quell our desire for conflict. To think that we will just cast aside all our weapons and make peace with everyone is a fantasy. Naiveté on our part. A pipe dream conjured by the bleeding heart socialists."

"It is not our responsibility to remain latched onto the past—"

" _Bah!_ " Larsen waved a hand dismissively as he walked back over to his desk. "Humans have _always_ been obsessed with trying to relieve our glory days. _Glory days_. We even have a name for it. We're expected to build a monument as a testament to sacrifices made in the past and just move on. Headstones and columns. Everything we do is to remind us of our past, of the days gone by. That's how we learn, Admiral. That's why we're here _now_."

"Then what does Shepard have to do with all this talk of monuments and headstones?" a faintly irked Hackett asked. "Surely you don't plan to have the man _executed?_ "

Larsen shook his head. "Death is not a fitting punishment for that man. No, even if he doesn't cooperate with my investigation, he will probably get off lightly. But he _will_ cooperate."

"How can you be so sure?"

"Because Shepard is amenable to logic," Larsen faintly smiled while the traffic now began to move at a steady pace behind him. "He knows just as well as I do that uniting with the aliens has only hampered humanity's ascension. We're part of the Council, we pay our contributions to that Council, we extend our resources between agencies, and all we expect in return is the same treatment. Are we not entitled to loyalty amongst our peers? Yet when humanity was attacked, everyone else just sat on their haunches and blathered excuses. Everyone folded like a cheap suit. All of the resources and support we were promised dried up in a flash. Surely Shepard had to have felt some anger when trying to bludgeon his way through the political process."

Now Hackett finally allowed himself to laugh, which was made all the more pleasurable by Larsen's darkening expression. So he was irking the senator. Good. It was about time that Larsen felt a little frustration.

"If that's what you believe," Hackett chuckled, "then you really don't know Shepard at all. That man will not blow everything up with the Council just because you have a score to settle. And, least of all, he will not submit himself to _you_."

"Regardless," Larsen pressed, "I have a feeling that Shepard will comply with my request because he has a skewed sense of honor. He will be compelled to clear his name now that I'm dragging it through the mud and so he will arrive here to give his account of what happened between him and the politicians. It might not be today, nor tomorrow, but I'll have him in the Reichstag soon enough to spill his guts."

Something did not feel right to Hackett, almost as if there was a discernable chill in the air and no matter how many layers he had on, he could not dispel it.

"So Shepard is not your end goal, then," Hackett deduced. "But why have him go through this whole song and dance if you're going to eventually cast him aside?"

Larsen said nothing at first but he instead opened up his omni-tool and withdrew an official-looking document, mirroring Hackett's actions at the beginning of their conversation. The orange glow emanating off the file lit Larsen's face up, casting shadows through the valleyed wrinkles of his aged face.

Hackett stared at the file but the print was too small for him to read at this distance. He sure was not going to give Larsen the satisfaction by having him bend over and squint to read the fine print, so his just narrowed his eyes and waited for the senator to give his explanation.

When Larsen continued to stay silent, Hackett finally gestured to the document with a sigh. "And this is?"

"Admiral, you and I know that a contract whose terms have been broken is no longer a contract at all. The other Council races have bent the laws with impunity by their refusal to lend us aid when the Reapers landed on our planet. It was only by negotiating with the direct leadership that we were able to obtain results. The Council, Admiral, is nothing but a body without substance. A collective straw man. Hypocrisy and partisanship are far more rife in that misguided body than what we face in the Senate, despite your perceptions, Admiral. Whenever humanity has bent or broken Council law, we've been censured without fail. But if the asari break the law, they merely get a slap on the wrist. We have been subjugated to this unfair treatment ever since we stumbled onto the galactic scene. We've only been offered a place on the Council because the other races _fear_ us, fear what we as a species can do. Perhaps we can finally show them our spirit, our might. Maybe it's time we take things into our own hands, for once."

Hackett did not like where this was going and he felt his pulse start to accelerate. "What exactly are you proposing, Senator?"

Larsen's grin was broad as he filed the document away, causing it to disappear in to thin air, no longer separating the two of them. "I'm giving humanity the opportunity to choose its own fate rather than be responsible for uplifting everyone else. This is the first of three bills that I intend to submit to the Senate, along with Shepard's testimony. The CAHMF-1 Bill, or the Council Apostatizing of Human Military Forces Bill, is my proposal that humanity _withdraws_ all military support to the Council, giving ourselves a five-year deadline to carry such a deed out, unless we have assurances from the Council that we will be allowed to enter talks to modify our membership terms."

Hackett nearly slammed his fists on the desk, momentarily thrown by the revelation.

"That is _outrageous!_ Such a bill would never—"

Larsen held up a finger and made a clucking noise with his tongue. "You'd be surprised as to what the people who _actually_ run your government think, Admiral. I've actually passed on and hypothesized the broad strokes of the CAHMF bill with all my colleagues, and they're all for the idea. So, seeing as we're the majority party in the Senate, this bill is most likely going to pass, should we put it to the floor for a vote."

"Madness," Hackett could only say. "You're just undoing all humanity has worked for."

"Yeah, but that was _before_ we learned that having a seat at the table failed to elevate us at all. Now, we're being counted on to act as one of the table's _legs_. But the interesting about being a table leg is that if you remove one, suddenly everyone is reminded at how important you are to the whole construct. The Council will budge long before we will—they're more inclined to keep us together than we are. They really don't want the table to be overturned."

"Shepard will never go along with you," Hackett nearly spat. "He won't be a part of this. I won't, either."

"Come now, Admiral," Larsen soothed as he held up his hands in a non-threatening position. "Be reasonable. Politics doesn't suit you, I can tell. You're a military man, through and through. You've seen the results of the bureaucracy, you know that my idea has some truth to it. I could use a man like you on my side. If you want to make sure that all of humanity's efforts to get where it is was not in vain, you'll support me on this. Endorse this bill and I can promise you that good things will happen to you down the line."

Hackett had managed to control himself enough so that he could put on his stone-faced persona again, as befitting an Alliance Admiral, but even so, he was still thrown by the sheer audacity of the request that Larsen had just bequeathed upon him that he still had to fight to tamper down his reactions. A slow, thoughtful blink escaped his control and he straightened his back in response.

"Could you… repeat that?" Hackett said, even though he had completely heard what Larsen had said.

"Endorse the CAHMF bill," Larsen repeated evenly, noticeably leaning a little more forward now that he had attached his hooks into Hackett. The showman was on display now, reveling in the fact that he was not having to keep his secrets locked down anymore. If anything, he was enjoying the reactions he was getting out of Hackett.

Then again, he had to have known the eventual response that Hackett was going to give. In fact, Larsen didn't just know, he fully _expected_ it, right down to the timing.

"I don't think so," was Hackett's curt response.

Larsen's mouth twitched upward in a grim smile, finding himself pleased at the admiral's statement regardless.

"The captain doesn't have to go down with the ship this time, Admiral. I'm giving you a chance to embark on another one _before_ your doomed vessel sets sail."

"All the same, I won't support it. It's not in my best interest, nor that of any of the branches of the military, for me to support _any_ bill on the table. But the very principle of what your bill represents is enough for me to walk away from it quite easily. Besides, Senator, no offense but you're not the sort of person I'd throw my hat in with. We're too disparate of individuals and the company you keep, particularly Erich Koenig, would just lay scrutiny upon me and my decisions. That's not a risk I'm willing to take."

Underneath his desk, Larsen's hands clenched into fists hard enough to crack bone, but they quickly loosened as the man brought his temper under control.

"Understandable," Larsen adjusted his collar with a jovial grin. "I would anticipate that an admiral lending his endorsement to a bill would be quite the breach in protocol anyway. It's not really seen as proper when you have military commanders getting so heavily involved in politics. Not really your responsibility, I would assume."

"I don't understand. Then why offer me the chance to endorse the bill?"

"Why? I guess I wanted to have an idea where you truly stand. Now I know for sure. That's all."

Alarm bells were ringing in Hackett's head on full blast. Not only was he perturbed by this stance of isolationism that Larsen was exuding, he was worried that this sort of behavior was being projected by a senior member in the senate. Larsen had the uncanny knack to be able to influence his subordinates in order for them to rally behind the positions he took. If this was the route that Larsen was intent on taking, then this CAHMF bill was going to have some serious legs by the time it would be put to a vote. Such a radical move, if successfully pulled off, would give Larsen major political credibility in the future. He could even use it to springboard a run at the prime minister, should he so desire.

A run for prime minister…

Could the end goal be that simple?

There had to be more to it than that, Hackett figured, but now Larsen was adjusting the cuffs of his carefully tailored jacket in such a way that Hackett assumed that their conversation was rapidly coming to a close. And not a moment too soon.

Upholding the time-honored tradition of ending a meeting respectfully, Larsen held out his hand for Hackett to shake. Hackett took the offered hand warily, keeping his expression neutral the whole time.

His mind was spinning up several different plans for him to take after he was done here. Obviously he could not take up a public position for or against the CAHMF bill, given his rank, but if he were to tip someone off, to make a comment under a pseudonym, then perhaps enough public interest could be drummed up against the bill in order to kill it before it could be voted upon. Hackett had enough faith in the public that they would not stand for the position that Larsen was taking, if the protest outside was any indication. The only problem now was that he was going to have to get the word out… somehow.

"Headed back to the fleet, I assume?" Larsen raised an eyebrow, now finished with the handshake.

"That's the plan," Hackett fibbed, his face still betraying no tells. "Shuttle's leaving first thing in the morning down in Grafenwöhr."

If anything, Larsen's smile broadened.

"You really should visit Berlin in the spring. It's much warmer around then, more conducive for men of our age."

"That will all depend on my schedule, Senator." If Hackett was ever going to return to the city, it certainly would not be on Larsen's behalf.

"We are all bound by our duties, Admiral," Larsen made a gracious gesture as he led Hackett to the door. This was the warm, genial Larsen, a version of Larsen that gave Hackett a distinct feeling of unease. "Enjoy the rest of your visit."

Hackett almost considered making a slightly biting comment, but held his tongue at the last second, choosing instead to walk smartly out of Larsen's office, keeping his gaze straight ahead and not looking behind him to give the senator any satisfaction.

As soon as Hackett disappeared from Larsen's view, the warm exterior of his face fizzled away back to his cold mask, and he shut and locked the door, counting on the soundproof seal to work its magic. He headed around his desk and typed in a code for a contact on his tool simultaneously, sitting himself down while the call began to connect.

Larsen did not have to wait long, because the recipient connected before the first ring could finish.

" _Awaiting your command, sir_ ," the brusque and mechanical voice of the Legionnaire uttered.

"Give me your location," Larsen said as he focused on his fingernails rather than the caller display.

" _Currently in the Sol system, per your instructions. Am I to be resuming my pursuit of the wayward Shepard, sir?_ "

"No," Larsen sharply whispered, his voice suddenly hoarse. "Not yet. I've got something else I need you to do first."

* * *

 _Rannoch_

Just a few more steps further. Three more seconds and he would be there.

Shepard slowed his gait down dramatically as he neared the middle of the outcropping, nearly finding himself overcome by emotion. The day was hot and the sun was bright, brilliant against a cloudless sky. Shepard had to blink away the perspiration that beaded near his eyes, finding that they just added to his anticipation.

But he was finally there. Relieved, Shepard knelt down, just feet away from the edge of the cliff. He sighed out loud in the open air, unheard to anyone else except himself. He rubbed a bare hand into the ground, letting the soil sift through his fingers before he released his grip, letting the dust fly lazily into the air as it was caught by the ocean currents.

The stone outcropping that Shepard was perched upon jutted several meters from the main cliff wall. A precarious situation otherwise, but the actual outcropping was supported by a weathered pillar that ran down to the ground, where the sea lapped against the rocks. Shepard was by a secluded bay where the water was not so rough. He was about thirty meters above where the ocean churned, the tall rock formations providing an ample shield from the wind.

It had almost been thirteen years since he had last set foot here, but Shepard could never forget this site. If he looked over to his left ever so slightly, he could see a slightly barren plain that still bore heavy gouges in the dirt and blast marks in the rock. A Reaper had died there years ago, pummeled into submission by a salvo courtesy of an orbital bombardment.

Shepard knew this, because he was the one who killed the Reaper in the first place.

Why, just a few kilometers away, Shepard could see the metallic stacks of the geth foundry off in the distance, behind a flat mesa. That had been the site of a brutal assault, a place that Shepard had cut his way through as part of his mission to liberate Rannoch. He had pushed his way through dozens of geth troopers, desperate pawns of the Reapers that had hurled their bodies at him in a last-ditch effort to prevent the human from completing his mission. In the end, the Reapers had failed here… and Shepard had gained a whole lot more than he could have imagined.

" _Shopping for another house?_ " he heard himself ask. Shepard internally groaned as he let the foaming sea of memory swallow him whole once more.

" _Beachfront property," Tali said smugly as she sat down beside him on the outcropping. Both of their legs were similarly dangling off the edge as they sat tantalizingly close, less than a foot apart. Their hands clasped the ground, gently nudging toward each other's._

" _Claim it fast," Shepard grinned, referring to the land. "It's a buyer's market."_

 _Tali chuckled at that and lifted her head up to watch the evening sky._

 _The two of them were still breathing hard after the events of the day. Just minutes ago they had both been shouting their lungs out at the stubborn admirals in orbit above them, the ones who had been so determined to wipe out the geth in their perceived moment of weakness, not knowing that to do so would have spelled their doom for good. Shepard and Tali had narrowly averted disaster by talking down the warmongering Admiral Gerrel and now, with the pulse-pounding stressors dealt with, everyone could now wind down and crash as the adrenaline left their systems._

 _Both Shepard and Tali looked harried and worn out, but they were both smiling. Shepard was a bit more torn up than the quarian woman—blood was still trickling from a head wound and he was nursing a few second-degree burns from narrowly missing the brunt of the Reaper's laser. That was not to say that Tali was uninjured. Parts of her suit was scorched and she had received a nasty blow from a geth half an hour ago that she surmised had resulted in a fractured wrist, but those were wounds she could shrug off in time._

 _The still smoking corpse of the Reaper, thickly gray, sparking with red electricity, painted an odd setting. The robotic leviathan, over a hundred meters in height, still groaned as the weight of it settled further onto the dusty ground. Shepard and Tali ignored the sight, choosing instead to bask in the natural beauty of the planet, having tired of being forced to look at nothing but wanton destruction for the last few months._

 _But Shepard did take several long glances at the woman next to him, something that Tali clearly noticed but enjoyed all the same._

" _You doing all right?" Shepard finally asked, his face lined with concern, a stray breeze cooling him._

 _Tali did not answer right away. "Just taking it all in," she murmured._

" _I understand," Shepard nodded. "Tali, if you need some time—"_

" _No, I don't," Tali said quickly as she grabbed for Shepard's hand, anchoring him in place. "Please, stay with me here. Just a little longer."_

 _Shepard felt the warm enviro-suit in his hand and he tightened his grip ever so slightly. There was desperation in her eyes. A fierce longing. A fire in his brain quelled instantly, so many peaceful connotations washed over him like a gentle wave. Something in his heart was telling him to not let go of her at all costs. That this moment must be seized!_

" _So…" he started, "…what's going to happen to us now?"_

 _It sounded even more pathetic when the words were said out loud and Shepard cursed himself for even uttering them. After what Tali had said to him just minutes ago… why would he be so callous?_

" _Now?" Tali blinked behind her purple visor. "Nothing's going to change, because I'm not staying on Rannoch, John. I'm coming with you."_

 _The jolt he gave must have been noticeable to Tali because she could feel his reaction through their link in their hands. Something was singing inside Shepard's chest and he cracked a smile, causing the blood that had crusted around the corners of his mouth to crumble away._

" _I wasn't going to ask you to come, you know," he said almost sheepishly._

" _Why not?" Tali sounded slightly hurt._

 _The answer seemed obvious to Shepard and he was a bit struck by Tali's reaction._

" _Why not? It's because I respect you, damn it. I'm not about to guilt you into coming along with me if that's not really what you want."_

" _But it is what I want," Tali pressed as she scooted closer to Shepard. "I guess my question is… is that what_ you _want, John?"_

 _John. No one but his mother ever called him that. To everyone else, he was either "Shepard" or "Commander." He disliked the allowance of having other people refer to him by his first name._

 _But when Tali said it… for some reason, it felt like he was home. The word just felt right, coming from her mouth._

" _Tali…" Shepard sighed as he hung his head, trying to focus on the waves below._

" _Is it?"_

 _The human ruffled himself in preparation. "Of course it's what I want," he said decisively, almost as if he was taking offense to the question, but of course, he could not do that to her. "Why wouldn't I want you to come with me? If I was a more insensitive man, I would ask you. I just care about you too much to take advantage of you like that. Actually, screw 'caring.' I love you, Tali'Zorah."_

 _Both the human's and the quarian's eyes widened in a pleasant sort of shock. Tali's mouth became dry and her grip slackened a bit. Shepard's breathing hitched and his heartrate skyrocketed to the moon in response._

 _Tali managed a very light, very breathy, laugh, her smile most likely the biggest it had ever been behind her visor. "Did you think that I could possibly stay behind now? I've waited so long for you to say that to me, you know."_

" _Well," Shepard muttered as he sheepishly scratched at the back of his scalp, "you said it first." His eyes trailed upward impishly, glinting mischievously and knowingly._

" _I meant every word."_

" _As did I."_

 _As the two fell silent, the crackling of the cooking Reaper became their serenade for the evening, joining in with the instrument of the sea to concoct a soothing soundtrack to lull themselves to. Their hands still clasped together, Tali adjusted herself so that she was leaning against her lover, her helmet lightly resting upon Shepard's shoulder. The two of them made peaceful sounds as they basked in the sunset, finding relief as they would live to see a new day upon the horizon._

 _For Tali, she had more than she knew what to do with. It was better than she ever could have hoped._

"This was where it happened?" a younger voice burst through the memory, ripping the strands of time apart to bring Shepard back to the present.

With a slow blink, Shepard inhaled. He turned, finding Roahn standing a few feet away, tentatively inching forward on the outcropping. She was looking out towards the gouged-out valley, trying to imagine the march of the death machine that had invaded the planet, visualizing in her head the white-hot column of red death that spewed from the oculi of the Reaper while her father dodged every blow in a deadly dance. It seemed almost fantastical for her to dream, yet it had happened, as hard as it was to believe.

"Just right there," Shepard pointed as Roahn walked over by him. "That was where the Reaper was killed."

Roahn squinted as she leaned over, as if the very act could help her picture the moment in her head. She then noticed that her father was staring quite intently at a space upon the ground in front of them, like the very direction of his eyes could bore a thin laser through the stone if he could just focus ever so slightly.

"What is it, dad?" Roahn breathed haltingly.

Shepard patted the ground respectfully. "Remembering, Roahn. Just the final spot where an ally—a _friend_ —stood of his own accord. A geth. Legion. You might have heard of him."

Roahn had indeed heard of Legion. Every child on Rannoch had heard the accounts of the geth who allied himself with the quarians, fighting alongside her father against the Reapers. Legion, the geth who had selflessly sacrificed himself to disseminate his evolved personality to all geth. The geth revolt on Rannoch had been quelled instantly due to Legion's subsequent death, all because he had discovered what it truly meant to be alive, a fact that the quarians had never been able to figure out in all their years of research.

Legion had been a walking contradiction of everything the quarians had figured the geth to be. He had not been an emotionless murder-bot. He had exhibited a keen and precise logic that was limited, but understandable, not to mention sympathetic. Legion had quickly embraced the idea of partnering with organics in the face of a greater threat, knowing that the geth had a greater probability of survival if they acted together. Not to mention, locked within the collective consciousness of the geth were all of the unaltered memories of how the first Morning War came to be, bucking three centuries of suppositions, rocking all quarians with such a devastating revelation.

All ancient history now, destined to reside in scholarly texts. Much of what Legion represented was to be gleaned from his involvement in the war, but perhaps no one could understand the simplicity of the stance that Legion symbolized, that three centuries of animosity had been fabricated all because of single decision that had invited catastrophe unto the quarians. A decision that could have been easily avoided.

"What was it like, working with Legion?" Roahn asked.

Shepard took a moment to compose his thoughts, quite keen of Roahn's age and how impressionable she was. Her generation was the first to see the geth not as demons, but as creatures with consciousness. A warning to the children not to repeat their ancestors' mistakes.

"It was… different," Shepard mused as he raised his head up to the starry sky. "Odd at first. Certainly not at all familiar. Legion, until just before he died, had a peculiar pattern of speech. He always referred to himself as 'we,' because he never thought of himself as a singular person. He saw himself as a collection of programs inhabiting one platform. That was where the multitudinous aspect came in. He never acted just for himself, but for all geth. It was a unique mindset that we all had to adjust to. Certainly a wake-up call for me—every geth I'd met before Legion were all shooting at me."

"It wasn't scary, talking to him?"

"Not really. Your mom was a little freaked out at first, understandably, but she soon learned to live with Legion being close by. It certainly wasn't easy to get used to him, that's for sure. The tone of his voice barely wavered, and it was always in this calm and deliberate manner. Soothing… but unnerving at the same time." Shepard crumpled his hands together as he continued to stare at the spot on the ground before him. "I catch myself often thinking of him. What he did for his people and why. He sacrificed himself to save his entire race. To save them from the Reapers… and the quarians who misunderstood them."

 _And I killed them all anyway, knowing that_ , Shepard thought, keeping his hands so tightly clasped that they were shaking.

The guilt was returning, eager to feed upon him. That dissolving bile, tearing him apart from within. Lungs turned to ash. Fire brewing in the belly. A storm clouding in the brain.

If Legion could somehow render judgment once more, Shepard knew that he would find nothing but sorrow and betrayal reflected in the geth. He had violated Legion's trust. He had forsaken all of the geth's hopes when he had made his final choice twelve years ago.

The very thought made Shepard sick to his stomach.

"How did you do it?"

Shepard's next inhalation felt like he was swallowing ice water down his throat. He shivered in the sudden chill before facing his daughter, her last few words echoing hollowly above him.

"What was that, Roahn?"

"The Reaper. The one you faced right here," Roahn said, pointing at the site again for good measure. "How did you kill it? I can't imagine how anyone could tackle such a demon like that."

"It certainly wasn't easy," Shepard thoughtfully replied as he sat himself down on the edge of the cliff, his legs now dangling into thin air, just as he did with Tali a long time ago. "I used a repurposed targeting laser that was synced to the entirety of the quarian fleet above," Shepard jabbed a finger up towards the stars through the purplish haze of the sky. "Called in several danger close strikes to bring it down."

It would be inconceivable to anyone else, but in that moment, Roahn had the barest glimpse of a plain on fire, dirt rising in solid plumes as the screech of a warlike monstrosity echoed through the desert, the whoosh of orbital strikes screaming through the air as they plummeted to the planet. Roahn's eardrums shook in response and she shivered in awe.

"Where did they take the Reaper?" she asked as she too joined her father on the cliff's edge.

Shepard shrugged. "I honestly don't know, Roahn. Some say that all the Reapers were taken apart after the war and shot into deep space. Others say that what remained of the Reapers were all moved to a black hole for them to be pulled out of existence. I just don't have an answer for you there."

"But why _you?_ "

Shepard, confused, glanced at his daughter for clarification, unsure of how to respond to that.

Roahn imperceptibly jittered as she tried to search for the right words to say. "Why was it _you_ , I mean? Rannoch wasn't _your_ home. As… as a human, this wasn't your fight. What made you decide that you were going to lead the charge, to save the quarians?"

What Roahn found in Shepard's eyes was something wistful, a transcendent spark of reminiscence, before it grew into a glimmer of knowing, rife with strong emotions.

"My tendency to get involved with fights that weren't my own finally came to a head, I suppose," Shepard tenderly rubbed at his beard. "I just felt… indebted to fight."

When Shepard saw that that answer would not suffice for Roahn, he continued to explain. "Before I was in a relationship with your mother, she received a notice one day, when she was serving under me, that her people were going to put her under trial for treason."

"What?!" Roahn jumped. "Treason? _Mom?!_ That's ridiculous!"

"That's about what I said when I found out," the human nodded in agreement. "But I believe I used ruder words to describe the situation at the time."

Roahn fumbled, her brain probably aching from the slew of information she just received. To think of her mother… sweet, wonderful Tali… being charged with such a crime, she would have assumed her father was pulling her leg.

But she remembered that her father did not make jokes, if at all.

"Why was she being accused of treason?! She… she didn't do anything of the sort… right?"

Shepard, fully aware that every single minutia of his reactions was being observed, gave a knowing look and tenderly patted Roahn's back in assurance, successfully calming her (though Shepard did not know the extent of how well his actions soothed his daughter). "Of course not. Your mother loved her people too much to even consider committing treason against them. According to the charge, she was accused of sending geth parts back to the fleet that were dangerous and still capable of being reactivated. Her former posting, before she rejoined my crew, was solely responsible for the procurement of geth technology to send back to the fleet. But Tali was very thorough. She made sure to check every single part that she sent to the fleet, to her father—your grandfather: Rael'Zorah."

"Grandfather…" Roahn murmured. Rael had not been talked about much in her household, even when Tali had been alive. Shepard had never met the man in person before and Tali never liked speaking of him. Rael was just as much of a stranger to Roahn as he was to her own father.

"Supposedly, according to the Admiralty Board at least, the parts that Tali sent back had reactivated and had resulted in an entire frigate's crew being killed," Shepard said. "To prove your mother's innocence, I accompanied her over to the stricken frigate, to find any shred of proof that could exonerate her."

"Did you find any?"

"Oh yes," Shepard nodded. "The security cameras caught every conversation on the ship. Just as she claimed, Tali had never sent over any dangerous pieces to Rael. Rael was, in fact, _deliberately_ reactivating the geth units so that he could make faster headway on his research. Arrogant of him. By bypassing the safety firewalls, Rael should have known that he was openly courting with disaster. His choice only cost him his life and nearly got his daughter exiled. He was willing to destroy his family to get his homeworld back in a twisted act of love. He was willing to sacrifice anything other than himself to reach his goal—but that was where he failed, Roahn. In the end, Rael would have received his homeworld anyway, with or without his involvement, because he would get to see what a _true_ sacrifice meant. He would have seen Legion, a geth, sacrifice _only_ himself for his people. In a sense, a geth was far braver than what Rael could ever muster."

Roahn's hands scraped against the dusty rock, smearing her palms with the brown coating. "But how does this relate to why you felt you had to fight for the quarians?"

"I'm getting to that. You see, I was defending your mother in her stead during her trial. As her captain, I had the right to act as her defense. I had to throw myself further into quarian culture to determine the entire scope and intent of the trial. It was an arduous task, but I eventually managed to talk all the admirals down into pardoning Tali while simultaneously hiding Rael's activities from them so that he would not be posthumously exiled."

For some reason, the image of her father acting as a lawyer _de facto_ was somewhat hilarious for Roahn to visualize. "How did you even _do_ that?"

"Honestly? I yelled at them a bunch. Called them morons to their face."

Roahn could not help the laugh that bubbled out of her throat, simultaneously awed and horrified. Now she wished that a recording of this _wondrous_ event still existed, because she had to see the evidence of her father shouting at the Admiralty Board in a fit of passion.

"And that _worked?_ "

Shepard craned his neck in all directions before he made a tiny nod, a teasing grin lingering on his face for good measure. "Worked well enough for the both of us, Tali and me. I managed to keep Tali's name clean… and we became more than friends after that, you see? I had so much of my life anchoring me to the quarian people that I could not stand back and watch when they were taking their planet back later on. I _had_ to help. I _had_ to fight the Reaper. I _had_ to give Tali a home, all because I loved her. And when you're in love, Roahn, you can make sense out of the craziest things. That's all it is. _Love is simply another form of insanity._ "

Shepard quieted, not being able to think of anything else to say. Instead, he relegated himself to staring up at the sky, watching the puffy clouds slowly march upon their ponderous trails miles above them. It was as if the very act of explaining his past to Roahn had taken its toll upon him physically. He felt tired, drained, exhausted. His bronzed skin, garnered from spending years out under the sun, felt itchy, like there was a constant burn upon him. There was still a sour taste in his mouth, a lingering sense of dread taunting him of the fact that _he still had yet to tell Roahn everything_.

 _In due time_ , he told himself. In due time.

Beside Shepard, Roahn could only stare up at the man she called her father. There was a distinct tightness in her throat that had been constricting further and further as time had gone on between them. Rael. Tali's trial. Legion. All things that even Tali had not talked with Roahn about. Such a gush of knowledge—she felt like she was drowning.

And the only preserver she could cling to, was her father.

 _Love is insanity_ , Roahn dimly recalled as she, after some hesitation, ceased flirting in her indecision before she allowed herself to lean against Shepard's side, feeling grateful for the mountainous support her father gave as they watched the sun set over the bay, the glow palpable even through her suit.

Shepard did not move as his exhausted daughter rested against him, except for a long look he gave her as he watched Roahn struggle to ward off her fatigue. The girl was so tired. She had been awake for more than a solar day. No wonder she was starting to crash right here and now. Simply watching Roahn fall more and more into sleep produced a slew of relaxing chemicals in his body. Sitting right here, he could forget about the agony of yesterday. He could forget about the pain that had been following him for years. He could forget—

Suddenly, without warning, his head cleared. The sea of thought smoothened out. It felt like he had been doused with a bucket of cold water, bringing clarity to his senses. In shock, Shepard nearly forgot to breathe.

His sinuses opened up, his lungs swelling with oxygen. Flavor burst onto his tongue. His eyes flashed with vivid color.

The pain was _gone_.

This… what was this? This… _peace_. No, it couldn't be. Sitting here like this, grasping at memories long past. This was a fantasy. He had not felt this way with anyone else. Not since…

In disbelief, Shepard beheld his daughter, still leaned over onto his side. Something groped at his mind, tugging at dangling strands previously shorn by loss, desperate to be connected and whole once more. His hand faintly twitched, a mechanism in his muscle striving to take his daughter's hand and encase it, protect it. Protect her. To be there for her after all this time. Perhaps it was truly his destiny, his _right_.

" _Tali_ …" the faintest breath escaped him, only for the wind to steal it away.

Not noticing the conundrum tormenting her father, Roahn's eyes finally drooped as she, still resting against Shepard, gave a quiet yawn before the blackness of sleep overtook her. But not before one final thought speared through her mind.

 _Love is insanity. What are you trying to tell me, dad?_

* * *

 **A/N: Speculation, speculation. Just what I like to instill.**

 **Playlist :**

 **Sparring with Larsen: "Hammer" by Cliff Martinez from the film _Drive_**

 **Tali, Roahn, and the Reaper (Family Theme III): "Mount Fuji" by Hans Zimmer, Bryce Jacobs, and Martin Tillman from the film _Rush_**


	9. Chapter 9: The Calm Before the Chimera

" _Previously, from what we have gleaned from your social networking habits, Mr. Koenig, it would stand to reason that, while the language you have utilized in the past can be considered boorish, you are within your right as a citizen to express your opinions voluntarily, even though said opinions qualify as being extremely inflammatory in nature. However, precedent dictates that it is not proper for a businessman like you to be making vulgar comments in such a public-facing position. What the citizens expect from a person like you, the CEO of a major corporation, is to remain level-headed and calm, to be an even-minded individual and it worries me that the empirical evidence paints a picture of you being incapable of doing even that."  
_ Sen. McCullough, UNAS

" _I know my rights, Senator. As a citizen of Earth, I am entitled to make my opinion known, no matter the forum. If you want to try and stifle me, be my guest, but you're going to have to rewrite the entire Alliance Charter if you want to go after me that way."  
_ Erich Koenig, CEO – Chimera

" _No one needs to rewrite anything, Mr. Koenig. You've given us all the power we need on the dictating front. Especially since we're not entirely done with your posting history quite yet. We've gone back a few months now and it seems, in between your occasional and erratic language, you manage to post, on a more regular basis, snippets unrelated to your line of work that are more provocative and sexual in nature towards various females. Curious, I would have thought that someone like you would have engaged your privacy filters for messages like these. Or were you trying to create a filter of braggadocio so that you could potentially make any of your followers jealous?"  
_ Sen. McCullough, UNAS

" _Uh… Senator, can I respectfully request that we not delve—"_  
Erich Koenig, CEO – Chimera

" _No, you may not request a thing, Mr. Koenig. If I can just read a couple of posts right now—November 8_ _th_ _, 2197: you've included an animated picture of a man in what appears to be some kind of racy undergarment doing pelvic thrusts as part of a message that you've sent to a woman who will be unnamed at this moment. The caption you've included reads as follows: 'You're going to get it tonight!'"_  
Sen. McCullough, UNAS

" _Senator, that was a reference to my friend nailing—err, getting a position after getting through some grueling job interviews. There was nothing inappropriate about that at all!"  
_ Erich Koenig, CEO – Chimera

" _November 16, 2197. Another post sent to this same woman. Only this time, you've included a picture of what appears to be a very detailed sculpture of a phallus on a desk. An extremely detailed sculpture, mind you. The caption this time reads: 'Now you can show your friends exactly what I use to fuck you with!' Mr. Koenig… are you going to try and come up with a flimsy explanation as to why you have a statue of a male organ on your desk that you send out publicly whenever you feel like it?"  
_ Sen. McCullough, UNAS

[TRANSCRIPT RECORDS: PAUSE OF 14 SECONDS LONG NOTED.]

" _Oh my dear Lord. Mr. Koenig, please tell me that this particular statue is not a detailed rendering of your body."  
_ Sen. McCullough, UNAS

[MUMBLING—UNINTELLIGIBLE]  
Erich Koenig, CEO - Chimera

* * *

 _Germany, European Union  
_ _En route to Grafenwöhr Naval Field_

Lazily, traffic drifted by the side of the car, almost appearing stagnant at the speeds they were traveling. Walls of trees and metal power lines surrounded the highway on both sides, an endless canyon of green and gray hues. The morning sky had the barest notes of blue, the encroaching clouds thick and heavy with moisture.

 _Just one more hour to go_ , Hackett sighed to himself as he checked his chronometer for the umpteenth time while he watched the rest of the traffic flow by.

Again Hackett was crammed into the back of the surprisingly plush service vehicle that had been transporting him around Berlin for the last couple of days. Ample legroom and a soft headrest made for as pleasant of a journey as one could imagine, or at least it was as pleasant as it could be. Hackett found that he tended to suffer from motion sickness if he rode on any vehicle on the ground, which is why he was not utilizing his omni-tool to focus on work, resorted instead to looking out the window to pass the time. He settled into his chair a little bit more, feeling somewhat envious of the comforts and conveniences that were afforded to civilian corporate design firms. Standard military design for anything, even something as basic as a chair, was to emphasize function first and foremost at the lowest cost possible. Hackett's body was used to sitting on uncomfortable surfaces for hours of a time, so he was not feeling particularly antsy while remaining in this car, but he was more or less annoyed with how military logistics had failed him this time around.

Due to some unforeseen mix-up with the dispatch software, there had been no shuttles in the Berlin area to whisk Hackett away to Grafenwöhr, where he would rendezvous with an atmosphere-capable frigate that would reunite with the 7th Main Fleet in orbit overhead. Hackett thought it had sounded ridiculous. How could there not have been any shuttles in Berlin, the _capitol_ no less, to fly him to a base that would have been less than an hour's ride away? Apparently the local police had reserved the remaining pool for some sort of training exercise near the Baltic Sea and there was the fact that there was still a significant shortage of usable military equipment because the war had destroyed the majority of flight-ready transportation that the Alliance could use.

So, seeing as air transportation was out of the question, and the mag-lev lines were too much of a significant security risk, a small convoy of three mundane and subdued-looking BMWs had been cobbled together to give Hackett a ride. As he had no other choice, this was the only option afforded to Hackett. Things could have been a whole lot worse, Hackett considered. Thanks to Germany's infrastructure, specifically in regards to their expansive Autobahn system, Hackett's convoy could cruise at a leisurely 150 miles an hour on the highways, which would make the entire trip only two hours long, pending traffic.

There was no point in griping, Hackett figured. One of the unsaid rules of the military is that gripes always go upward in the chain of command. However, since Hackett's rank happened to be at the roof of what the navy had in its meritocracy, he was unable to relay his gripes to anyone. Hackett was not a spiteful man, so it was not like anyone who was hapless enough to be in auditory range would be subject to much acidity on Hackett's part. The man's mantra of always adopting a confident poise still held firm after all these years.

The miles were eaten away as the BMWs continued to cruise down the highway. Hackett, lost in his repeated reminiscing about his meeting with Larsen, could dimly notice the roughened feel of the road through the thick tires. His hands gripped the armrest ever so subtly tighter—he had always been used to traveling in space versus on the road. Spacefaring always seemed like a much smoother endeavor to him. He was just glad to finally get off this planet. Earth was wonderful, but it quickly got old the longer he spent here.

 _The captain doesn't have to go down with the ship this time, Admiral._

Larsen. What did that man know that Hackett did not? For years Hackett had prided himself on his knack for having an accurate foresight, but throughout the entire time he had talked with the senator, Hackett had gotten the feeling that Larsen was always just a few steps ahead of him. There was this nebulous aura that surrounded the senator, one that kept his true goals close to the chest.

That damned bill of his. The bid to withdraw all military support. What kind of idiotic display was that? Why this newfound interest in diplomatic regression? Hackett just could not put himself in Larsen's shoes. He stifled a bitter sigh, having the sinking feeling that Larsen's bill had a good chance at becoming the new policy. Everyone in the government was firmly divided among party lines and Larsen's party, like the man had said, was the clear majority. They essentially dictated the direction that humanity was to develop in. The representatives, prime minister, even the councilor were all part of the party's grand design. They would never break from the policy—they were too weak for that.

Hackett was not a politician by trade, there were still some of the subtleties of that sector that he could not quite grasp, but he knew enough to realize that only a miracle could kill Larsen's bill before it became law.

Then the driver said something that Hackett couldn't quite make out.

"What was that?" he asked, trying to make sure his voice projected from the backseat.

"I said we just lost our rear escort," the driver responded, sounding worried.

Hackett, not privy to how his convoy had been directed, gave a slow blink. "What do you mean, lost?"

"Escort 2 just turned off onto the exit back there. Didn't even update his position over the comm."

Hackett turned around his seat just in time to spot a dark blue sedan, much like the one he was riding in, take the off-ramp behind him that led to a surface street underneath the highway. There was now no one covering the rear of the convoy. It was just Hackett's car and the other vehicle in front.

"Just keep going," Hackett told the driver, making a note to follow up on this anomaly later on. "We'll find out later why Escort 2 deviated from the objective."

"Yes sir," the driver said, but didn't sound fully assuaged.

A bit annoyed at the interruption, Hackett settled down into his seat, now too distracted to open up his omni-tool to send out a few messages before he reached the navy base, motion sickness be damned. He resumed looking out the window, hoping for glimpses of little villages that would break up the monotony of purely staring at this thick forest, with trees going on as far as the eye can see, completely encasing the road on all sides. Despite it being the fall, the leaves could not possibly be any greener and only a few trees had barely a sign of them starting to brown for the upcoming snows.

As the convoy headed deeper and deeper into the woods, a diffuse glow began to smother out from where the morning sun was positioned. Hackett looked up out the window and saw that a thick fog was beginning to approach, not yet burned off by the heat of the day. The clouds were coming in low, encasing the trunks of the old trees with seemed like a bulky white goop. At the speed they were travelling, the cars were blanketed in the mist in moments. The automatic headlights had already flickered on by this point, but the spearing fan of illumination they cast barely penetrated more than a couple dozen feet ahead of them. From where they were, the only thing that Hackett could barely make out were the rear headlights of the escort in front.

Hackett was not fazed. He knew that they would burst through the fog in mere minutes, so he simply reclined back into his seat and forced himself to relax. Even now, the mist was thinning, a few scant rays of the sun being allowed to shine through.

 _Just one more hour_ , Hackett reminded himself.

A flicker of color then flashed across his irises. Hackett initially dismissed the distraction. A reflection from a passing car, he reasoned. But the flickering still persisted in a rapid-fire strobing of red and blue hues, even managing to penetrate through the dense fog that still encapsulated them.

The driver looked into his review mirror and gave a concerned frown. "Sir?"

"Out with it," Hackett said, still facing forward, but feeling a grave pit open up in his stomach all the same.

"We're… being pulled over?"

Hackett had to do a mental double take to make sure that he had heard his driver right before wheeling around in his seat again. Sure enough, a police cruiser was practically tailgating their car, their flashing lights scraping so furiously through the air that Hackett had to squint his eyes. He could not make out the district of the cruiser, nor could he see the faces of the officers through the tinted glass.

"This is ridiculous," Hackett grimaced. Who had ever heard of local police pulling over an admiral's vehicle? "Were we breaking any speed limits?"

His rank made it possible for anyone under his direct command to supersede any local laws or ordinances, a privilege given to people of similar rank or for extraordinarily important politicians. Hackett was filing away a mental reminder for his people to get to the bottom of this. Dispatch should have called ahead to all the districts and let them know he was passing through. Pulling over his vehicle and causing an unnecessary amount of time to be wasted from a traffic stop—he could get several people fired for this stunt.

He forced himself to take a calming breath.

"There aren't any restrictions on this Autobahn, sir," the driver reminded Hackett. "Nor were we driving erratically."

"Have you tried contacting them? Let them know who we are?"

"Tried that already, sir. They seem to be on a different frequency. No response."

Hackett sulked in his seat and gave a dismissive wave with his hand. "Let's just get this over with. Comply with them for now. Go ahead and pull over."

The driver took a moment to absorb what the admiral had just said before giving a ponderous nod. "As you say, Admiral."

Slowly pulling the wheel to the right, the driver began to lead the car to the shoulder of the highway, but before he could cross the first holographic line, a harsh voice burst from the speaker of the police cruiser behind them.

" _Not here. Next exit_."

"This is getting weirder and weirder by the minute," the driver muttered to himself but complied with the officers' orders. He then made sure to relay these orders to the escort car ahead of them, letting them know of the situation.

The nearest exit was only a half mile away. Escort 1 dutifully took it, as did Hackett's vehicle. Hackett noticed a small sign that they passed by, a directional sign, that pointed to a town called Cobbelsdorf on the left and Göritz on the right. There were no mile markers denoting how far away each little hamlet was from the highway.

" _Take the next right_ ," the officer half-spoke, half-shouted from the cruiser behind Hackett.

The driver continued to comply and now all three vehicles were plunging through the thick fog at a steady and measured pace. The gigantic trees closed in, limiting visibility on all sides. It was hard to tell where the sun was through the canopy of leaves and the layer of clouds. The driver kept taking looks at the cruiser from his rearview display, wondering when the police were going to request all of them to finally pull over. The squad car was still flashing its lights, emitting its squealing siren every once in a while to prod them along in their general direction.

" _Turn off here_ ," the officer ordered as a path through the trees on the right burst through the fog.

Hackett immediately suspected that something was amiss, if he did not have that feeling already. The road the cops were asking them to go down was not even paved. It was little more than a track, cut into the woods, completely cut off from the main streets. While the indicated trail was wide enough for there to conceivably be two lanes, this was so far out of the way that Hackett was not having a good feeling about this at all.

"Sir?" the driver asked, echoing Hackett's sentiments.

Unable to find a reason to disobey, Hackett betrayed a tiny shrug. "Do what they say."

Mustering a soft grumble, the driver led the vehicle into the forest, the tires now chewing up the soft and springy ground underneath, spitting out chunks of soil to land amongst the breathy grass. The trees here slashed at the fog, slightly improving visibility, but now everyone had to contend with being boxed in by the forest. Hackett's strategic mind was all over the place, recognizing that they were in a zone with little to no escape routes and that they had the disadvantage of being in an area that they did not recognize. Filled with unease, Hackett dropped his body down slightly as he slid over into the middle seat.

" _Stop_ ," the cops barked after about a minute had passed.

The convoy dutifully responded to the command and gently guided their cars to the side of the path. The driver of Hackett's car continued to keep his eyes on the rear display, making a note of where the officers were as he gently applied the electric brake, holding the car in place, but he did not switch off the vehicle's fuel cell. The headlights and rest of the electronics on the two cars continued to silently run, bringing light to this shadowy part of the country.

A few seconds passed in total silence, the chirping of birds and hissing of cicadas the only sounds audible through the thickened glass of the car. No one in either vehicle moved a muscle, lungs aching from slow breaths.

The doors to the police car then swung open and now Hackett definitely knew that something was wrong. The two individuals that stepped out were decked out in full body armor from head to toe, not at all like traditional police garb. Even though the armor was colored green and white—traditional police colors in this country—the patterning was all wrong and the gear was too bulky. The weapons the two men carried were assault rifles, not standard-issue pistols. Way too heavily armed for local police. It was just all _wrong_.

"Turn off your vehicle," one of the men made a circular motion with his hand as he tentatively stepped forward, keeping his gun aimed at a diagonal angle to the ground.

The driver scowled as he slowly reached his hand around to his side for his service weapon. "That's not right," he said to Hackett. "These guys are too well equipped to be cops."

"That's because they're _not_ cops," Hackett said gravely as he too took his pistol out of his holster, but kept it near his lap, out of sight from the approaching men.

There was a tiny snapping noise as the driver flicked the safety off his weapon. "Sorry, sir. We drove right into it. What are your orders?"

"Turn off your vehicle! _Now!_ " the 'officer' yelled right outside.

Hackett did not answer at first as he was temporarily distracted while looking at the men approach his car from the rear. "Wait until they're five meters away. Then make an immediate U-turn and head back to the highway."

"No fear of getting shot, sir?"

"Well… we'll just have to see if it was worth getting these bulletproof windows from the lowest bidder," Hackett allowed a small smile. Not a grin of slyness and cunning, but of a crazed and peaceful acceptance of the inevitable.

Sometimes, all one can do in certain situations is smile.

The driver slowly reached his hand up, towards the driving display in preparation for their move. Mist fluttered around the ground near the car, twirling about the dead leaves and the stray blades of grass that threatened to poke up from the murk. The armed men continued to approach, weapons at the ready, still partially masked by the fog.

"On my mark," Hackett whispered as he kept his gaze peeled. "Three… two…"

Hell.

There was a prickling feeling at the back of Hackett's neck—an inherent warning to alert him to danger. A sixth sense in action. Slowly, in a dreamlike state, Hackett rotated his neck just in time for twin motes of light to blast him full-on in the face, causing him to be temporarily blinded. He gave an involuntary grunt and threw up a hand to protect him from the glare.

But then the light moved.

The motes morphed and coalesced into two intense driving lights nestled within the chassis of a large object hurtling in their direction. A truck. No… a Mako tank. A deathly quiet pounce reminiscent of a jaguar on the hunt. The approach had been so silent, thanks to its zero-emission drive, that Hackett had not even heard it coming until it was too late.

The same fate befell Escort 1.

Six wheels spun silently over the moistened dirt. Fog and air parted out of the way as six tons of matter barreled through in an instant.

Hackett could only watch in horror as the Mako accelerated, not showing any signs of slowing down, and _barreled_ right into the side of Escort 1. The resulting _bang_ was not as loud as Hackett had figured, but it was still loud enough to startle him. The Mako's armored front made tidy work of Escort 1's vehicle. The side of the sedan crumpled instantly, impacting into the car itself. The bodywork of the sedan was made of aluminum—it stood no chance against a depleted reactive armor. The side windows buckled and shattered, sending glass quietly spinning to the ground. The run-flat tires were smeared off the rims of the car, ripped to ribbons as the Mako pushed Escort 1 several meters off the road.

Off the road… and right into the trunk of an old and gnarled tree.

The sedan _crunched_ as it was sandwiched between the Mako and the tree.

Then the men behind Hackett's car opened fire. The crackling of bullets flying from their guns easily split the quiet air of the forest, and the trees scattered the noise, sending echoes reverberating in all directions. Hackett instinctively threw himself down as the bullets began impacting the vehicle, sending micro-shudders aching all around the bodywork.

The bullets smacking onto the glass sounded like a wild animal was taking frenzied chomps to the car. Hackett looked up to see that the windshield was still holding, but each repeated impact from the guns of the assassins left a tiny spiderwebbed mark upon the glass, cracking it ever so slightly, but not punching all the way through. The police imposters continued to move forward, their rifles barking in short bursts as they made slight fans in their cones of fire. They experimented with new places to shoot upon the car, trying to exploit a weakness of some kind. It was no use, the sedan was bulletproof all around to protect the inhabitant. It would take a long time and a lot of bullets to make even a dent towards the occupants.

The Mako was now in the process of backing up after it had rammed Escort 1 into the tree. The front of the tank looked to be unscathed, while Escort 1 was in dire straits. Hackett could see splatters of blood painting the dashboard of Escort 1's car in addition to the limp forms of the men trapped inside the carcass. Evidentially, Hackett's guards had been killed immediately upon impact, their rib cages ground to powder and their body cavities imploded when the tank had pancaked them.

Soldiers in red and black armor began clambering from the rear of the Mako, bringing their weapons to bear as well. Hackett whirled around front to the driver, who was still sitting in his seat in shock, loudly swearing as he tried to get the car into gear.

"Drive!" Hackett yelled. "Get us out of here!"

"It's no use!" the driver's face turned ashen as he beheld the man he was supposed to protect. "They've hit the engine block!"

The sinking pit in Hackett's stomach just grew deeper. If the engine block had been hit, the hydrogen fuel lines cut, then they were dead in the water. Not to mention with the threat of leaking hydrogen…

A shadow just outside the car fell over Hackett and he had little time to take stock of what was going on until there was no time at all.

Something outside made a fierce motion and a metallic arm as thick as a tree, draped in a silver and black polymer armor, _punched_ through the driver-side window in an instant. The fist that had burst through the thick, bulletproof glass unclenched and its spider-like hand outstretched greedily, reaching into the cabin in an entirely smooth motion. It had been so fast, so fluid, that neither Hackett nor the driver had any time to react. Both of them were shell-shocked and cut up from the flying glass, the dribbling blood down Hackett's face making it hard for him to concentrate.

The metallic fist that reached through the window easily found the driver's neck, and in a split second, the hand swiftly wrapped around the man's throat. The driver managed a single gurgle before there was a whirring of servos and the hand visibly _flexed_.

The sequence of crackling noises that came from the man's neck shook Hackett down to his core. By the way the man slumped in the grip of the metal beast, Hackett was sure that the driver was dead.

Even though the thing outside had broken the driver's neck in a second, there would be no gentleness with how the body would be handled. The intruder wrenched his body sideways and quickly pulled the man out through the cracked window, shattering the rest of it that had not already been broken. The jagged glass edges that were still in the window frame sliced at the skin of the driver, sending a torrent of blood seeping down the side of the door and staining the seats. Hackett jumped backward in shock, appalled at the sudden and casual violence. His hands fumbled at his pistol, but his digits lost all feeling and he dropped the weapon on the ground.

Hackett was breathless, pondering how someone could punch through a bulletproof window without breaking every bone in their hand, when the same shadow returned and hurled itself at the side of the car in a massive blow. There was a wrenching of steel, a rendering of metal, and the door was soon ripped from its hinges—an enormous jolt that shook the car upon its shock absorbers. The monstrosity casually tossed the door behind it as if it were no lighter than a sheet of paper and slowly approached the doorway, nothing separating it and Hackett any longer.

The metal being reached in once again, precise fingers snapping for purchase, but instead of Hackett's neck, they found the collar of his shirt instead. Hackett tensed himself, expecting to be yanked out and onto the ground, but the arm gave a firm tug instead, reminding Hackett of who was in control, but not asserting complete physical dominance over him. Hackett grasped at the seats of the interior, desperate to forestall his extraction, but that plan had to be abandoned the very instant the metal fist punched him in the chest. Hackett felt something break and a sharp pain erupted in his body. His hands immediately flew to the affected area, coughing and wheezing. His mouth tasted like iron and his vision blurred.

Dazed, the bleeding Hackett was thrust out into the air of the misty woods, his breath fluttering in cloudy spurts as the chill from the shadowy understory fell upon him. He felt himself be pushed against the side of the ruined vehicle, his eyes focusing long enough to give him a clear image of his oppressor.

Dark colored. Tall… two meters, maybe. Entirely armor plated. Cyborg, obviously. Eight red optics. Clear faceplate with… was that a hint of organs beyond the frontal lobe?

Only one candidate matched that sort of description, Hackett knew.

It was only then did he realize that he had misjudged Larsen. He had completely overlooked the depths that the senator would be willing to sink to in order to preserve his vision.

The Legionnaire, remaining silent, splayed out his hand and held it close to Hackett's arm. In the background, the Chimera soldiers were quietly moving in, setting up a perimeter in stark silence. A warm glow from both Hackett's and the Legionnaire's omni-tools flickered and the cyborg gripped Hackett's arm firmly so that he would not wriggle away.

 _My omni-tool…_ Hackett thought drunkenly as he recognized the passing of symbols between the two interfaces. _He's copying it._

The hack finishing in seconds, a low rumbling noise groaned from the Legionnaire as he finished, so low that Hackett could not tell if it had been involuntary or not. The Legionnaire now stepped away from Hackett, a pistol now in hand, as he beheld the admiral with his constant metal expression.

"Your chance to survive came and went, Admiral," the Legionnaire rumbled, the dissonance of his two-toned voice producing an odd ringing effect on Hackett's ears. "A disappointment. Just like Shepard."

Hackett spluttered another weak cough, blood beginning to form at the corners of his mouth. _Shepard… is he alive?_ "Larsen knew I would not make any other choice. Is he really prepared to go down this road?"

The Legionnaire did not respond but simply lifted his arm, aiming the barrel of the heavy pistol smack-dab at the center of Hackett's body.

"A pity," Hackett sighed, unwavering in the face of his destiny. "One foe replaces another."

"Admiral, I'm surprised," the Legionnaire spoke, the light in his oculi focusing with malicious intent. "You of all people should have realized: there is no end to this cycle."

"Then what are you waiting for?" Hackett asked.

The Legionnaire fired a second later.

Twin booms shook the forest.

A flock of birds fled into the sky, desperate to escape the violence on the forest floor.

The quiet then consumed the noise in seconds, allowing peace to return.

"One more monument for the historians," the Legionnaire uttered, almost reverently, to the slumped body of Admiral Steven Hackett.

The Legionnaire then tossed his pistol, but not before whipping out a device and holding it up closely to the grip of the gun. A purple beam, much like a UV light, blasted from the device and searing marks soon appeared upon the side of the gun. They looked like fingerprints, but they were not etched with the familiar looping pattern that was persistent in all humans. Instead, the marks upon the prints were all thin, vertical lines that swooped down in a "V" pattern. The cyborg made sure that, when he hurled the gun away after tampering with it, that it looked like it had sailed well clear of the position he was situated in right now.

The rest of the Chimera troops were hard at work pouring out the contents of white canisters upon the twin wrecks. A foul smell was emitted from the clear liquid, a smell that the Legionnaire could not detect. The bleach would be instrumental in dissolving away trace amounts of DNA that was present at this site, but if that would not be enough, the firebomb grenades that a trooper was currently placing at strategic points would finish the job.

Another soldier was busy sprinkling some sort of fine residue upon the ground. Invisible to the naked eye, but not for any forensic drone. The foreign substance, comprised of material commonly found on another planet, would divert attention away from the true perpetrators should the upcoming investigation ever get this far. As far as the Legionnaire was concerned, this was just a precaution. Better to be safe than sorry.

"Sterilize it all," the Legionnaire ordered for good measure. "Leave no trace. We're to have no evidence that we were—"

The Legionnaire trailed off as his advanced optical sensors picked up a hint of movement, near the edge of visibility from the wall of mist. Immediately, his hand twitched and the automatic shotgun design swung into place upon his arm, locking upon the bolts there. The cyborg clenched a fist as he walked out into the road, the rest of the Chimera troopers looking on.

A quick scan revealed that a single-motor truck—a civilian vehicle—was parked a little less than a quarter of a mile away, idling at a standstill. Its headlights shone a weak path through the fog, tender wisps cutting into the light. It was still in the center of the road, as apparently the driver had come across this sight and, not knowing what to do, halted in place.

Unfortunate timing on the civilian's part, the Legionnaire mused. Wrong place, wrong time.

The Legionnaire zoomed in onto the driver of the truck and saw a concerned looking human, perhaps sixty or seventy years of age, stare upon the scene with trepidation. The Legionnaire detected that the human's pulse was rapidly quickening now that the man was able to notice that armed soldiers were quite close to his position. Nervous and suspicious at what he had innocently transpired across, the man gingerly lifted his arm down, perhaps to shift the truck into reverse so that he could make an inconspicuous escape.

Pity. Had he taken a different route, things might have turned out different for him.

The Legionnaire would have sighed if he could. He swiftly aimed the long-range shotgun in a well-practiced gesture. He would not hesitate when it came to this. Larsen had already stressed upon him the immediacy and importance of this particular mission. The sensitive nature of this, murdering an admiral, implied that a thoughtful approach had to be applied here.

And such an approach implied no witnesses.

The Legionnaire's first shot, from over a hundred meters away, rocketed straight through the windshield of the truck, completely shattering it. The slug hit the civilian in the shoulder, the shockwaves rippling through his body and blowing his arm completely out of his socket, painting the back of the cabin completely red. The blood loss was immediate and immense. Death was instantaneous.

The cyborg kept firing in methodical bursts, sending slug after slug into the truck's engine block, puncturing the hydrogen reactor, and sending a cascade of sparks flying around the spilled fuel. A fire started in moments, lapping at all the spilt hydrogen in moments, coalescing from erratic flickers into a full-bore mushroom cloud that rose from the earth and seemed to split the heavens in a blue conflagration. Even the dew-sodden leaves on the trees above became alit as the intense heat scorched them from top to bottom.

The truck was now completely engulfed in a rippling fire, sparkling and crackling as the components of the rig either popped or melted. Miffed from the interruption, the Legionnaire stowed away his rifle and made a circular motion with a finger, a signal for everyone to resume their duties.

Less than fifteen minutes later, long after the Chimera troops had departed, the forest was once again set with quiet, with only the calm flickering of flames from the ruined vehicles acting as the lone indication for trouble. The mist continued to engulf the scene in the absence of life, regardless of the fires, impassive to the rage that had been demonstrated upon its borders.

Still crumpled next to the remains of the car, lit by a golden-ruby aura of combusting fuel, the body of Admiral Hackett waited alone.

* * *

 _Above Rannoch_ _  
_ _Departure Orbit Lane 4_

The Sahara Vilos-2 cruiser sped away from the dusty planet at a tremendous velocity. The spaceship fled the protective arms of Rannoch's gravity in moments, soon finding itself cradled by the cold and lonely expanse of empty space. Shepard did not mind the emptiness all that much. He had spent so much time in his life in space to begin with that he was used to the sight. Hell, he mostly found himself more loath to a natural atmosphere rather than the artificial gravity wells present on ships. If he had an aversion to space to begin with, now would be an odd time for it to crop up.

The cruiser, an arrow-shaped design, had been a purchase that Shepard had made years ago and that had been kept in one of Rannoch's shipyards ever since he had built his house for Tali. He had rarely flown the thing in the past, but Shepard always had the inkling that there would come a time where he would be thankful that he owned a ship like this instead of having to charter one. It was safe to say that the time had come calling and Shepard was grateful that his insight to plan for the worst had not let him down.

The ship was no _Normandy_ by any means, and it could not really be called a luxury yacht, either. Shepard had not bothered to waste his money on a craft that would have too many bells and whistles and would therefore be frivolous. The model he had selected was barebones and did not really exude comfort from every angle, but it was sturdy and reliable, which was all that Shepard was asking of it at this point.

In terms of amenities, this ship had the basics. Two rooms for sleeping, both cramped. One bathroom, also cramped. A kitchen area with a dining table, cramped as well. An office complete with an extranet console, cramped. And a pilot's deck on the upper level, accessible only by a thin aluminum ladder, which was, as expected, cramped.

Shepard did not mind the lack of space. In fact, it was somewhat refreshing. No space wasted on board this boat was a sign that everything had a purpose, that the entire design had been thoughtful and meticulous in its creation. In contrast, he had had a harder time adjusting to his house back on Rannoch, for Tali had been adamant to let every room breathe with the amount of space allocated to the entire foundation. It had been so expansive that it had nearly given him a panic attack for the first few months. In this ship, with its familiar setting, it seemed like everything was back to normal for him.

Finally, some semblance of commonality.

He was in the secondary bedroom right now, watching his daughter sleep upon the thin mattress, curled up in a fetal position. Shepard sat in a chair across from the bed, hunched over as he silently observed Roahn, acting as a silent protector. The poor girl was exhausted from the events of the past day and a half. As soon as she had embarked on board the ship, she had collapsed onto the bed from fatigue. Soft snoring sounds could be clearly heard from her vocabulator and no glow from her eyes pierced her electric blue visor. She had even fallen asleep on the bed without even bothering to cover herself with the bedsheets. Now, Roahn did not make a habit of sleeping under sheets while on Rannoch even, but space was cold and even a quarian's enviro-suit had trouble mitigating a chill like that, especially since the heater on this ship was not particularly great. Shepard had thoughtfully covered Roahn with them as soon as he spotted her beginning to shiver. She seemed to calm down shortly after that as she grew warmer again.

After letting half an hour pass, Shepard decided that Roahn was now in a comfortable enough sleep that he did not need to worry about her so much. He quietly crept out of the room and into the kitchen area, where he had deposited the knapsack that he had been carrying from his house all this way.

The thin package that he had grabbed from his bedroom was the first thing that he saw within the knapsack. After giving the room a careful once-over, Shepard gently lifted the package out and slid it into a nearby drawer before locking it. At least that would be something he would no longer have to be concerned about.

Shepard dug in his hand again and produced two of the injectors filled with the sickly-yellow medicine that he always took in his irregular intervals. He gave a mournful sigh. Two. Just two injectors. That would not be enough to last him a week. He needed this medicine in order to properly function. CBLB502, or Entolimod, was an expensive serum that was not only scarce, but potent. He clutched the injectors with a frustrated grip. Procuring more of this was going to be a problem that he was going to have to tackle later. There were simply bigger fish to fry right about now.

"It's always something," Shepard murmured anyway, wishing that life would throw him a bone every now and then.

Cerberus, the Reapers, and now Chimera. All clamoring for his head as they raced after him in hot pursuit. The relentlessness of his enemies knew no bounds.

 _That creature. That… Legionnaire. How can I protect my daughter from that thing?_

How, indeed. Just the very thought of Shepard having to stand up to the Legionnaire again made the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end. Bullets could not scratch the cyborg, nor could his fists. Nothing that he had to offer with all of his strength seemed like it could make a dent in the Legionnaire. And _that_ was the thing that had been tasked to ruin his life? Were he a less arrogant man he would be completely terrified of the prospect.

But he was _Commander Shepard_. What could possibly terrify a man like him?

A lot, apparently.

Wrestling with his own conscience, Shepard gave a forlorn glance to the room where he knew Roahn was resting. Somehow, he knew what that fear was like, the kind of terror that ensnares a person in dark ice and turns the legs to lead. The kind of terror that slows the mind and rots away at the organs. A deep, nameless pain.

He had felt that fear only once before. He hoped that he would never feel it again.

It seemed like grave portents were doomed to follow Shepard around anyway. While clambering up the rickety ladder to the pilot's seat up on the second level, Shepard could not help but feel the beckoning call of doom whisper at his ear. Why did all the evils of the galaxy have to choose _him_ as its focus? Why couldn't he be left alone for once?

As he settled into the seat, the stars and wisps of nebulae streaking by the windows, Shepard managed to dispel the lingering cloud of his grim future, now concentrating on a more optimistic outcome: their survival. To keep his daughter safe, he needed a game plan. He knew that the only way to keep himself and Roahn ahead of Chimera was to constantly be on the move, to never linger in one spot for very long. That would be a difficult prospect… _if_ he did not have a ship. But, seeing as he _did_ have one, that was a whole other disaster that he would not have to worry about. Lucky him.

But where to run to next? On paper, the list of destinations seemed innumerable. The Milky Way was a big place. A lot of small corners for someone to hide in. There was definitely an advantage to be had here. One that could easily be exploited.

Yet the galaxy had a sort of predictability that came with it. Developed planets were a natural locus to travel to—most organics had the natural tendency to blend in amongst a crowd, to be a regular face amongst a sea of faces. The line of thinking was that no one would make a blind jump to an undeveloped system. People needed resources such as fuel and food to survive. To deliberately cut themselves off from a supply line, to risk living off natural resources of a foreign world—a huge gamble on its own—was ill-advised and nearly guaranteed to be a wager that would not pay off.

Then again… there was an inherent familiarity in the unknown. So to speak. Shepard had an inkling that his idea of the unknown was vastly different than what other people might think.

An idea came to Shepard at the exact same moment that he brought up the galaxy map display from the center console right next to him. The miniaturized version of the Milky Way booted up in a column of blue light, billions of pixels all congregating into a perfect reproduction of the expanse that made up all he ever had known. A spiral cloud of light, of creation. Compared to the galaxy map that he had back on the _Normandy_ , though, this one was rather pitiful in size. The map here was maybe two feet long in diameter while the one back on his old ship would have spanned an entire conference table. Beggars could not be choosers, so Shepard did not have any complaints to utter as he widened the scope of the galaxy as he began to plan his next course of action.

"Palaven… Thessia… Earth… the Citadel…" Shepard murmured as he cycled through his mental list of possible destinations, but somehow he could not think of a solitary reason why each location would be a good place to hide out. It all went back to his theory of locuses. People could just not stray from the populated worlds. It was a tic that was very hard to drop, even for him.

Unless… he was going about this all wrong.

"No single destination," Shepard breathed as he gazed upon the galaxy map. "But a _series_."

Yes! A series of places to visit! That would keep the two of them mobile for as long as it took and Shepard realized, there was a grand opportunity to take here.

Why had Roahn been so frustrated with him for all this time? It was because he had been rather tight-lipped about his entire past, something that Shepard had already promised to her that he would gradually rectify. So, Shepard considered as the idea in his mind spread, scattered all around the galaxy were places that had held quite some significance to him, as they had represented points in his life where he had been profoundly affected in some way. If he was going to tell Roahn his entire story, what better way to do it than to take her to these places where his story was defined?

It was so brilliant that Shepard nearly broke out in a grim laugh for his ingenuousness.

Over the course of the next few minutes, Shepard plotted out the tentative course that he was rearing to take with his daughter. He had to base it all on the relative distance between his current location and the coordinates of the other places he was planning to visit while trying to aim for the least amount of fuel consumed between system hops. Doing the math was not hard—the ship's computer did most of the heavy equational lifting—and in the end, Shepard had a nice schedule all planned out for him to take.

Just in time, too. Shepard could see the energetic wafts of blue color start to blink past the nearby asteroid belt. Bright light, more luminescent than any of the stars in the background. The mass relay. The gateway to travelling across the galaxy in an instant.

Mere seconds away from being swallowed up by the mass relay's light, Shepard leaned back in his chair and folded his hands over his lap. An impending sight this must have seemed, but it was something that Shepard was hardly fazed by anymore. He could not even begin to count how many times he had taken a relay jump. The thrill of it had vanished from his memory.

But for some reason… this time there was a thrill. A tiny, lingering remnant, but a hint of a sudden and altogether unexpected excitement nonetheless.

There was no time to ponder its meaning as the craft reached the edge of the infliction zone. A watery bolt of energy jutted out from the energy core of the relay and gently touched the ship, sending power hurtling down into its drive systems, shuttling it into overload.

With a soundless gulp, the ship instantaneously exited from the solar system, leaving nothing behind from where matter once existed.

* * *

" _Roahn… Roahn…"_

Somebody was gently shaking her, driving her from her sleep. With an annoyed whine, she tried to ward off the offending hand, wanting desperately to cling to her bed. Her feeble blows upon the arm that was shaking her were harmless—her hand just slid helplessly over the surface without any results.

"Roahn. Wake up."

It was only when she was concentrating hard did she realize that the voice was her father's.

Sleepily, she cracked an eye open, and for a second Roahn was seized with a momentary panic when she did not recognize her surroundings. However, she quickly relaxed when the familiarity came back to her, that she was lying in one of the bedrooms that her father's ship accommodated.

Right… this was her new room now. Before she had fallen asleep here, Roahn barely had any time to take stock of her new digs before exhaustion had overtaken her. All this disorientation should have been expected for her.

Roahn's vision felt blurry, like everything was washing out of place. Roahn so desperately wished that she could just rip off her visor and rub at her eyes to sear away the myopia. Yawning, she sat herself up and swung her legs off the edge of the bed, blinking furiously as Shepard slowly came into focus, standing over her next to where she had been sleeping.

"I'm up, I'm up," Roahn groaned as she tried to stifle another yawn.

"I can see that," Shepard replied with some amusement but jerked a thumb behind him shortly thereafter. "You want some breakfast? There's all kinds of food in the kitchen that I can fix for you."

Ordinarily, Roahn would have taken her dad up on that offer, but she gave her stomach an involuntary pat and no starving grumble erupted from it. It took her a beat to realize that she was not all that hungry, probably a result from all the stress she had to go through the other day. Her digestive system would be back to normal soon, but it was simply playing havoc within her right now thanks to the chemical imbalance she was still undergoing at the moment.

Roahn shook her head, still a little too tired to be talking in complete sentences.

Shepard patted the girl's leg patiently. "Well, when you're ready, come meet me by the exit ramp."

"Wait… dad," Roahn called as her father began to leave. "Where are we?"

"Come see for yourself," Shepard shrugged as he rounded the corner but not before giving Roahn a knowing bump of his eyebrows.

Obviously Roahn knew that her father was deliberately edging her on to make her get out of bed and, damn it, it was working, too! Curiosity spurring her more than she would care to admit, Roahn hopped off the mattress and hustled through the weaving, pipe-laden corridors of the ship before she finally wheeled about where the exit ramp was and tromped her way down the path to where the craft had touched down on solid ground.

Except Roahn's feet did not find ground first.

They found water.

With a splash, Roahn stumbled into water about nine inches deep, almost up to her knees. She had been so preoccupied with following her father outside that she had not even noticed the fact that, when she had been coming down the ramp, that the surface of the "ground" had looked a lot more shimmery and fluid than normal.

Now she knew why.

The water sloshed all around her and Roahn hopped in place for a second as she did a double take. She froze where she was standing, hands automatically raised in exasperation as if to say, " _What the hell is going on?"_ Her legs and feet were cooled from the temperature of the water. It actually felt quite nice. Her enviro-suit was completely waterproof up to a hundred environments, so any leaks were the last thing on her mind. What was on her mind was why her dad had set down in the middle of body of water. Surely there had been at least a speck of dry land on this planet for them to park upon?

"Roahn!" she heard her father calling.

Shepard waved to her upon a sandbank, less than a hundred meters away. Dry land. Roahn mustered her strength and did a slow, awkward walk through the shallow lagoon, trying very hard to keep her balance and to prevent herself from tripping and making a face-plant into the water. As she moved toward her father, Roahn did notice that, unlike the murky and silty waters of Rannoch's oceans, the water of the lagoon here was crystal clear. If she kept still, Roahn could see each magnified detail of her boots down below, partially dug in amongst a soft bed of sand that glimmered and sparkled like glass. A variety of tiny sea creatures crept near her position: echinoderms like starfish and urchins. Bizarre lifeforms trapped in their own little world. Roahn gawked at the beings, finding them fascinating.

Roahn's feet soon found the edge of the sandbank and she began to ascend, water streaming off her body. She shook out her hands, ridding them of the dampness. Droplets of the salty lagoon water spattered the baking hot sand, evaporating in mere seconds.

"Dad…" Roahn panted as she finished stomping her way out of the water before realizing where she was and turning on the spot, taking in her surroundings, "…where… are… we?"

The lagoon they had landed in was not just a simple pond in the middle of nowhere. Rather, as Roahn now found out, they were encased within a small canyon where towers of marble white rock stood tall over them: an atoll. At the top of the rocks were shrubs of hardy green vegetation: long, limber vines that crept down from the vertical faces, and even trees with toughened bark that crept even further to the sun shining overhead. Boulders of black volcanic rock sat embedded in the sand, having crumbled away from the main stone barriers, some taller than Shepard, even. Off in the distance, waves danced over natural breakers that formed a line separating the atoll from the ocean, creating a constant roar that immediately reminded Roahn of home.

"This?" Shepard said after Roahn was finished turning about in wonder. "This, Roahn, is _Virmire_."

"Virmire?" Roahn repeated as she looked at the footprints she left behind in the soft sand. "We're on another planet? Another _system?_ "

"A long way from home," Shepard sagely nodded. "But that's how things are going to be for us for a while, I fear."

"Because we're being chased," Roahn stated flatly, still too absorbed in taking in the foreignness of the world for emotion to color her words.

"Precisely."

Roahn then rotated in place, the heels of her feet making crunching noises as they ground the sand in deeper. "Why Virmire? Why this place? Why aren't we at some place like the Citadel? Dad… why did we _come_ here?"

Shepard knelt down, placed a hand on Roahn's shoulder to put a stop to her endless questions, and gently pointed off in the distance. "For _that_."

Roahn followed the trail that Shepard's finger made through the air and easily managed to spot what he was referring to in seconds. A gnarled spire, made out of a gray-purple metallic material, towered above the walls of stone and vegetation a mile or two away, all twisted out of shape. The metal lookout easily stood out against the background, the lone artificial construction in the area, sans their ship. If Roahn peered as closely as she could muster, she could see that the spire looked somewhat blackened, like it had been scorched.

Blackened… from a fire?

"Come," Shepard nudged his daughter before she could ask any more questions. "It's perfectly safe here now."

"Safe?" Roahn stumbled as the two of them waded into the lagoon, now heading towards a shallower path coated with damp sand and toughened green vines. A thin canyon etched into the atoll comprised of the bubbly white pumice rock. "Why _wouldn't_ this place be safe before?"

"Can you figure it out? There are clues all around us to help you answer that."

Confused, the overwhelmed girl looked in all directions, not knowing where to start with her deductions. They kept walking along the path, now coated in shadow from the midday sun as they walked close to a dripping wall that oozed clear water, the volcanic rock at the base shining midnight black. Shepard slowed his pace, watching his daughter as she concentrated very hard and squinted her eyes to keep herself focused. She looked at her father, then on the path, then on the wall, then to the path again—

"Wait," she stated, in a daze, and walked over to the wall on the opposite side of the path. Unlike the surface on her right, this wall was dry as a bone, and the color here looked a bit off. Darker than normal. Maybe that was because…

Roahn took a finger and gingerly traced a line down the wall. A line of soot smudged off where she applied her finger, coating her enviro-suit and smearing the color into the surface. The warmer color of the rock shone beneath the dusty coating, which Roahn determined to be a microscopically thin application of carbon scoring, judging by the density and the size of the particulates that she could see.

"An intense heat caused this," Roahn murmured as she stepped back from the stone pillar, now able to see that the coloring extended all the way to the top of the column. "A… a firefight? No, the coloring's too solid, too uniform. Plasma could cause this… but to such a wide surface? No… a greater source. Something like a… a bomb. Is that it, dad? A bomb?"

"Very good," Shepard faintly smiled, proud of his daughter's logical reasoning. "A bomb was the exactly cause of this discoloration."

"Then why would you mention that this place was safe only _now?_ That is, unless this bomb was a… a… _oh_."

The reality of the situation seemed to hit Roahn in full force and she suddenly became quiet, sobered up to the realization of the devastation that must have occurred right where she stood.

"A _nuclear_ bomb, Roahn," Shepard said, his bearded face now turning stern. "That's what went off here fifteen years ago. The radiation's worn off by now, that's why it's safe to travel here, but for a time, the place where we stand now was so irradiated that we could not even take a single step here."

"Were…" Roahn hesitated to say it, because she almost had an inkling that the answer she was going to get would be something she would fear, "…were _you_ the one who put the bomb here?"

"I was," Shepard said after a thoughtful beat. "But only to get rid of _that_."

They had rounded a corner at this point and Roahn could see, past a tangle of bushes, the construct that the twisted tower belonged to, the landmark that she had spotted right at the beginning. Metal and smoothened stone all came together in a complex configuration that looked to Roahn like a large hangar or a base of some kind. There were no windows that she could spot on the facility—it looked like quite a dreadful place.

Also, what Roahn noticed next was that an entire chunk of the facility appeared to be… _missing_. Like something had blasted out from the middle of the building, tearing large holes into the structure and leaving jagged gaps in the stone walls and metal ceilings. Some of the other towers that Roahn could see appeared to be shorn away, severed from an intense blast. Even parts of the metallic constructs were all distorted and bent, like heat of a thousand degrees had been licking at the sides, causing them to partially melt.

Roahn took a step forward, toeing her boot into the nearby stream, but Shepard held out a hand, preventing her from getting closer.

"While on the outside things are safe," Shepard warned, "I'm betting that the inside is still hazardous to travel. We won't be able to get very far here as there's probably too many pockets of radiation that we'd have to traverse."

"What is this place?"

"That," Shepard said grimly, "is where I started to learn the truth about the Reapers. This was a base used by my first quarry when I became a Spectre: Saren Arterius. I blew up this base because of the danger that it held to the galaxy, to buy everyone time, even if it cost lives in the end."

"Saren," Roahn repeated, recognizing the name. "The rogue Spectre."

Saren Arterius was one of the few blights upon the Special Tactics and Reconnaissance group, and also for the turian race as a whole. Selected by the Council from the most elite ranks of its members, Spectres were an independent wing granted extraordinary authority and diplomatic immunity by the Council, designed to allow the members to focus all their attention on their missions and to disregard any red tape that would follow their exploits otherwise. Saren was one of these elite members that had been granted this authority and had summarily abused it when he decided to betray the Council and ally himself with the Reapers in a foolish bid to preserve his survival. Saren would ultimately commit suicide in the end; when confronted with the evidence that submission towards the Reapers would not forestall his own destruction, Saren decided at a critical moment that he would be a puppet no longer and thus he had decided killed himself. A small redemption for a man of atrocity.

There was a raised metal path off to the right that was partially collapsed. Shepard and Roahn climbed on top of it, following the tracing arc of steel as it curved around the rock and over the lapping waves.

"To understand this place," Shepard continued as he slowed his walk thoughtfully, folding his hand behind his back, "I think that I need to take you back a bit. Before your time, I mean. How much do you know about the Spectres, Roahn?"

"They're the right hand of the Council," she answered dutifully as she eyed the ground where she walked. "They're assigned to preserve galactic stability. Like… you. _You_ were one. You were able to go… wherever you wanted and do whatever you wanted."

"Textbook answer," Shepard smiled. "But reality tends to be a bit more complex than that. The Spectres aren't really all that much of a regulated fighting force. They're beholden to the Council, yes, but in my experience the Council did not seem to be too concerned with how a mission was handled but rather _if_ it was handled. The outcome was the only concern, not the process. I did get some occasional flack for the decisions that I made during my tenure, but they never amounted to anything on what would constitute my record. The impression that I got was that the Council just did not want to know what their Spectres were doing exactly. Perhaps the thinking was that they would become accomplices in the legal sense if one of the Spectres under their purview took things too far and caused an international incident."

"Which is what Saren did," Roahn piped up as she trotted alongside her father, the crumbling wreck of the facility coming into view once again.

"Indeed. Before Saren, discharging a Spectre for gross misconduct was seen as an impossibility. The Council simply gave them too much protection and the very nature of the command structure left them not quite so amenable to casting a Spectre out. I believe that the Council would be left embarrassed if they had to discharge a Spectre from the ranks, a Spectre that they had personally appointed. It would not look good for the councilors if one of their own betrayed their trust."

"But Saren was discharged eventually. The councilors eventually _did_ cast him out, right?"

"Only after they were presented with irrefutable proof that Saren conspired to attack Council-allied worlds. Proof that I never would have gotten had it not been for your mother," Shepard gave Roahn a little nudge at that. "In some weird way, I have to thank Saren for bringing the two of us together, as we would never have met in such unusual circumstances otherwise."

"Only _after_ you gave them the proof, huh?"

Shepard sighed and slowed to a halt before turning, leaving the tangled wreckage of the facility at his back. He dropped to a knee and beheld his daughter with a muted seriousness, his lip twisting into a morose expression through his thickened gray beard.

"Roahn," he said, "our society is not a perfect one. I wish I could tell you that the people responsible for governing us all were driven by morality instead of their own personal objectives. Greed, accountability, fear. No one in a political position is completely infallible to these influences, including the councilors. It's why it took so much wrangling to actually convince the Council to discharge Saren. They would have preferred to ignore the majority of our evidence, circumstantial though it may have been, before taking action against a man that they had vetted and approved. It was a pattern that continued long before I was even in the picture. They tried to cover up Saren's involvement afterward to preserve their integrity and they tried to cover up the evidence of the Reapers as well while I was in my coma. Anything that didn't align with their preferred narrative, they altered. People would rather live in a fantasy than have to face a bleak reality."

"That doesn't sound like a problem that only the Council has," Roahn tilted her head after some thought.

"No, it isn't," Shepard nodded, caught off guard yet again at Roahn's correct inference.

"Your own people… they're trying to do the same thing to you right now."

Shepard spread his arms wide. "When you're not part of the preferred narrative, you get cut out. People like to claim that they're staunch defenders of the 'truth,' Roahn. But this is the lesson I want you to take away today: the truth does not guarantee the complete picture. It can be altered to fit anyone's convenience. It all depends on our perspective and our knowledge. It is our ideals that shape our truth. Take for example, the quarians and the geth. The quarians believed that the geth were actively uprising in armed rebellion against them, desperate to shake free from the bonds of their masters. That, as you know, was a lie. The geth were only fighting back because the quarians had initially provoked them. The 'truth' that the geth were uprising was a carefully distributed fabrication from the quarian admirals to all of the people across the planet in an attempt to unify them against the geth. The citizens bought the lie their government was telling them, and in turn, made it their truth. With little evidence to the contrary, the people believed that the geth were uprising, and the rest, as we say, is history."

Roahn began climbing a moss-covered boulder as they walked and talked, thinking hard as she scaled the mountainous face while Shepard paced below her. The moss gave Roahn traction as she dug her fingers into the leafy surface, rising several feet above ground level with ease. She sat herself down on the boulder while Shepard leaned against it, still standing in the baking hot sand, as they watched the gentle waves billow and smother the breakers in lapping assaults of foam.

"So…" Roahn pointed to the left, indicated the broken ruin of the facility. "What was the truth of that place, dad?"

"That place?" Shepard repeated as he shuffled his weight from one foot to the next on the unsteady surface, blinking the sun out of his eyes. "You could say that that place revealed the full extent of the truth to me."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, when your mother and I first came here, the briefing that we had been given from our contacts on the ground was that this site was a breeding facility for krogan clones. We rightfully assumed that Saren was creating an army, one not at all affected by the genophage, in order to boost the number of lackeys at his disposal. Thus, we decided to nuke the site given its inherent danger. An army of genetically modified krogan was not a prospect that the Council was willing to face, a fact that we all agreed upon. But when we infiltrated the facility so that we could place the bomb at a sensitive point, we made a critical discover. Saren was apparently _not_ the leader of this entire operation, but was in fact acting on the orders of a greater master for a goal initially beyond what we could imagine."

"A Reaper," Roahn breathed.

Shepard's fists momentarily clenched as the edges of his vision turned dark. He rubbed at his eyes, chest aching, as he turned away from the facility while Roahn slid down from the boulder next to him, hoping for a closer look.

"Yes," Shepard grimaced. "A Reaper. _Sovereign_. The first one in the system in 50,000 years. Back then we had little information on what the Reapers actually were, let alone what their goal was. But the revelation that _they_ were the ones pulling the strings on Saren widened our knowledge of the truth drastically. We had been led to believe that it had been Saren's idea all along to oppose the Council in a bid for power, but we could not fathom with our initial knowledge that the Reapers had been behind everything from the very beginning."

Shepard groaned as he bent down to pick up a rock, warmed by the sun. He absentmindedly tossed the stone in his hands a couple of times before he squared up his shoulders and took a single step, flicking his wrist in a wide curve. The rock, spinning in a flat arc, skipped several times upon the water's surface, making musical plinks as it bounced out of sight.

"That's how it is," Shepard said, not noticing Roahn's astonishment towards his feat behind him. "People fight for their distortion of the truth. Nothing's unbiased anymore. Everything needs to have a spin to it. It never ends, and people get hurt because of it."

More wrecks and relics, Roahn noted. But that was how things were with her father, she reasoned. It was all he had ever known for years—being a soldier. The remnants of his exploits lingering in the ground like trophies. This base was his doing, a contribution to the war effort.

But her father seemed to take no pleasure being near to the ruin of the base. Why was that? This was the site of a major victory for him, right? Yet there was no happiness etched into his face. Deep lines of sorrow cragged his features, his blue eyes turning cold. There was something dark and disturbing that this place held for him that Roahn could see was still visibly affecting him.

Perhaps she had already been given part of the answer—Shepard's worldview, his truth, had been so drastically altered here that it had proved to have completely changed the narrative of his assignment. He had thought he had been tasked to pursue a man. Instead, the place was the site of the exact moment that Shepard became in charge of forestalling the greatest invasion upon the galaxy. Most people would crumble with such a load on their shoulders, but not Shepard. He had not faltered. He had withstood. He took all the Reapers had to offer and gave his all right back.

But, Roahn realized, her father had not emerged unscathed. He still carried his wounds, mental and physical, wherever he went. The things he saw, the people he lost, they all added up and ate away at his mind. She could see it in his tormented gaze, in his hands that occasionally shook. He was still dying from his victory, dying because he had sacrificed so much for so many. Whoever he was, no matter what kind of a person he had been, this had been the spot for him where everything had changed, where all the pieces had started to fall into place. Shepard had not known it yet, but the knowledge he had gained on Virmire would be his ultimate salvation as well as his damnation. Cursed to saving the entire galaxy from the information he alone possessed, a role thrust upon him without warning.

If he had been offered the choice instead, would he have taken it?

"There's more," Roahn whispered as she sat down, her back to the roughened boulder, beholding her father patiently but with a laser focus. "There's more… to say. You… you lost someone. Right here. Didn't you?"

Shepard joined Roahn in sitting down, splaying his feet out in the sand, but he did not look at her just yet. "Yes," his said, voice hoarse as he pointed a finger just below the twisted spire off in the distance. "Right there. A fellow marine, one of the best and most loyal people I've ever come across."

"What was his name?"

Shepard stiffly smiled. " _Her_. Her name was Ashley. Ashley Williams."

Roahn briefly shook her head. The name rang a slight bell for her, but she could not place where she had heard it initially.

"I've… never read about her," she admitted.

"And despite my best efforts, she's remained a mere footnote in the grand scale of things," Shepard gritted his teeth. "The daughter of a general, one of my brightest subordinates, the very person who ensured that this bomb would go off here in order to save the lives of trillions, and still no one can remember her name." He grabbed a fistful of sand bitterly and let it seep through his fingers. "It's… _unfair_. She died too early. Way too early for it to have any significance to the masses. If she had died when the war had been in full swing, there would be monuments to her dedication back on Earth. Yet she died in a black-ops assault on a backwater planet, doomed to anonymity except from her cohorts. Her sacrifice has been forgotten or lost by the people who matter enough to do something about it. All I could get her was a name plate on a memorial wall. It wasn't enough, Roahn. I didn't do enough."

Shepard hurled the fistful of stinging sand away with a dissatisfied grunt, like he was trying to fling away his torments.

"It sounded…" Roahn started, "…it sounded like you loved this woman a bit."

Now Shepard gave a wry chuckle. "Oh, Ash would give me so much grief if she had heard you say that. No, Roahn, I respected her a hell of a lot, but it was never love. She was just a person that I admired very much, a person who would have had a bright future had things turned out differently."

Shepard suddenly appeared gaunt and feeble as he pondered, taken by extreme emotion. Roahn was nearly alarmed at the sudden change her father exhibited, feeling her breath quicken uncomfortably within her chest.

But the weakness in her father soon evaporated, leaving him looking healthier, but he still carried the solemn gaze that had followed him for all of Roahn's life.

"I've never been good at taking the loss of others," he quietly admitted. "Especially the ones under my command. I always keep on asking myself, _'What could I have done differently?' 'How could I have saved them?'_ I know I'm not supposed to think this way but… I've never been able to help it. Every single person that I have lost… I just keep on dreaming of a better way. A way to save them."

 _What Kaidan said… immediately after…_ Shepard thought. _I couldn't tell him how true he was. We left her down here to die._

Shepard's palm opened as he lined it up with the ruined facility. He twisted his fingers into claws, imagining that he had the power to simply take what was left of the entire building and _crush_ it in his hand, finishing what the nuclear bomb had not erased. To grind it to powder, crumple it beyond recognition.

A single building. A person for such a lousy building. The barest pushback against the incoming tidal wave of destruction.

But it had only been one person for the good of the galaxy.

 _Did I even have to sacrifice one?_

This reminiscence was pointless. Ashley was dead, and no power in the galaxy could bring her back to life. He thought this had been a wound that had healed long ago, but now he realized that he had only applied a bandage to a gaping laceration. His unseen wound bled here, filling him with regret, an invisible poison that hastened his self-loathing. Minutely shaking, Shepard fought to get a grip on himself, to force the persona of the Commander to arise and to be the steady rock for Roahn to lean against. He was the only one she had now. He could not be weak when she needed him most.

But, as much as he tried, the Commander would not reveal himself. On this beach, he was still just Shepard. Still human. Frail, vulnerable, and human.

And incomplete. An empty feeling… deep inside him… a space there felt hollow. A vacuum. It had been growing for a long time, eager to feed. Silently, it snarled and gnashed, its roots taking hold. It rendered him in half, tearing his mind in twain. A part solely locked into the past, mocking him in his defeats. A man like him had a lot of regrets and many failures to latch onto. Ashley had just been one of his failures. There were countless others to pull from, he knew.

"Dad?"

Roahn's voice was successful in snapping him from his tortuous spiral of despair. He gave several rapid-fire blinks and looked upon his daughter, the yellow sand now blinding him with its golden color.

"Yes, Roahn?"

"Did mom know Ashley well?"

It was easy to forget that, despite her attachment to her mother, Roahn still had barely an inkling of what Tali truly represented to her husband. Shepard considered the question, his fingers tapping a beat upon his wrist.

"Very much so. When they first met, their relationship was a little tenuous due to their initial biases, but in no time at all, they became fast friends. Ashley once told me she felt like Tali's bigger sister because of the rapport they shared. When Ashley died, Tali was very upset, as were all of us, but she took her loss the hardest. She spent several hours in her bunk after that sorry day, all by herself, trying to get over her friend's death."

Roahn did not notice that she was digging her heels in deeper into the sand as her father spoke. "I wonder why she never told me about Ashley before."

"I suspect it's because she never stopped feeling the pain from the loss. Sometimes, no matter how hard we try to forget, Roahn, losing someone you care about is a wound that just might never heal. Tali probably never talked about Ashley because… it upset her too much."

There was something to the way her father said that—the tone of his voice, perhaps—that caused Roahn to raise her head in clarification.

 _A wound that might never heal._

Shepard had grown silent by now, letting his gaze linger towards the sea, while Roahn's fingers trembled upon empty air.

 _A truth_ , she realized, recalling her father's words. _The truth does not guarantee the complete picture._

Father's lesson… but altered, distorted… to fit _his_ narrative.

 _Keelah, he's talking about himself!_

Why Shepard had never talked much about his past as a soldier before, Roahn already knew why. But what Roahn did not realize, until today, was why Shepard seemed to be hesitant in talking about Tali, his beloved wife. Now she knew.

Loss. It was the key that bound everything together, the catalyst that revealed the complete picture. Her mother had felt it when she had lost Ashley and Shepard was feeling it now. When Shepard had lost Tali to sickness, he had been so consumed with the grief brought by the loss that he could not bear to think about her. Roahn then realized that Tali had brought her father so much happiness in his life that her absence had practically gutted him, practically tearing his heart from his body. It was his biggest weakness, the one thing that he was not ready to talk about with his own daughter just yet.

 _Is all of this… just him building up the courage to talk to me about her?_

Suppressing a shudder, Roahn felt herself begin to be seized with a despair of her own. The sorrow she had felt when her mother had died, followed by the anger at her father's distant behavior afterward, were all emotions that he must have felt around that time as well. He had been hurting this whole time, just like her, but unlike his daughter, Shepard had let his guilt fester, his shame in unable to talk to his daughter to assuage her grief. It was killing him then just like it was killing him now.

This searing pain. The emptiness in the soul. It lingered in her as well.

Upon the hot sand, Roahn gave an involuntary shiver.

* * *

 **A/N: Now that Shepard and Roahn are finally free from Rannoch, this gives them a whole lot more opportunities to delve into glimpses of Shepard's life, and don't worry, that will include the friends that Shepard has made over the years. We're still not halfway, there's plenty more story to get through.**

 **Hopefully there won't be too much of a gap with the next chapter, as I have to make a short trip to SoCal tomorrow (glad I got this one released today!) In any case, I hope people like the direction so far.**

 **Playlist:**

 **German Ambush: "That's Not a Choo-Choo" by Marco Beltrami from the film _Logan_**

 **Virmire - Remembering Ashley: "Pure Spirits of the Forest" by James Horner from the film _Avatar_**


	10. Chapter 10: A Vessel's Memorium

" _Mr. Koenig, let's talk about Chimera's company structure for a moment. On your main extranet page, you have several other subsidiaries listed under your main organization that appear to offer more specialized services than what Chimera already provides as part of its main service pool. Now, I'm speaking for the official record that this sort of listing would indicate that Chimera is serving as an umbrella corporation and not a sole organization. While this sort of company structure is not unusual at all, what does draw our attention is that some of these subsidiaries—Pangenum, Z Lab, FortiFI—all of their balance sheets have indicated that, while they have been providing the same services for over ten years, the names that they have been listed under have apparently changed no less than three times, as we can see here in previous new corporation filings listed under your name. FortiFI, for example, has been previously listed as ZETTA for three years starting in 2190, then as Yttrium in 2194, before settling on its current name. Have you any explanation as to why this unusual pattern seems to exist for your companies?"  
_ Sen. Wilkinson, AU

" _It's all about perception, ma'am. Customers with a specific need for the products that Chimera and all of the corporations under its wing are a rather fastidious type. They're greatly influenced by the kind of light that the media paints them in. And, as we know, there's been a lot of negative spin towards the kind of companies under Chimera in recent events. People tend to get a little jumpy. What tends to work in order to preserve our cash inflow—while being a little on the morally shady side, I'll admit—is to simply change the name of the subsidiary. It's a completely legal process, and our customers don't seem to notice."  
_ Erich Koenig, CEO – Chimera

" _So what you're saying is that you only need to change the name of your company in order to keep annual revenues the same? All this to avoid the effects of bad press?"  
_ Sen. Wilkinson, AU

" _I know it sounds crazy, but it really does work. When you shed the name, you shed the stigma. There's a psychological aspect about it, but I'm not sure what it's called right now. I'd have to look the term up."  
_ Erich Koenig, CEO – Chimera

" _Mr. Koenig, speaking as someone who has a doctorate in psychology, I'm not exactly assuaged to hear that your customers could be so easily duped to the point that you would only need to change the name of your company in order to keep them on board."  
_ Sen. Wilkinson, AU

* * *

 _Monaco_

The skycar slotted itself nicely into the second-floor coach gate of the Veritas Towers, smoothly gliding to a stop before lowering itself down a few inches so that its passenger could easily step out. After the apparatus of the scissor-doors and hatchback canopy glided open, Senator Raynor Larsen confidentially swung his legs out, his designer shoes touching warm cobblestone. Larsen coldly disregarded the automated voice from the skycar wishing him a pleasant night, already striding forth towards the entrance of his apartment building, adjusting his jacket as he went.

The lobby of the towers was ornate, furnished with gleaming brass flourishes and polished granite tiles. Hostesses and maître d's all nodded in the senator's direction, also bidding him a good evening. Larsen ignored them all as well, finding the noise these people made to be the annoying buzzing of the sycophantic proletariat as part of providing a nuanced oath of fealty to him. Their prattle was barely genuine, it was only at the risk of holding onto their occupation were they required to act in such a manner.

Fools. Everyone who worked here was only here in service of his whim. Why else would he be paying the exorbitant rent to live here? He did not need nor care if their attitudes towards him were sincere. He only needed them to do their jobs.

Larsen walked towards the private elevator at the end of the hall and waved his omni-tool at the scanner. The elevator beeped and immediately began to propel him to the penthouse at the top of the western tower. Larsen's ears slightly popped from the velocity that he accelerated upward, but he just grasped his nose and corrected the pressure with a simple breath of air, yawing his jaw afterward.

The back of the elevator was entirely glass, giving the occupant a clear line of sight to the city below. Had Larsen been facing the right direction, he would be witness to a marvel of a view. He would be able to see the hills of Monaco aglow from the swanky high-rises and shops, the sprawling mansions of the forested slopes, and the warm aura from the yachts upon the docks of the Mediterranean. The beaches were swarming with swimmers and the roads were bustling, despite it being nearly eight at night.

A normal night for an abnormal city.

Monaco was a rich man's town. Had been for decades. Centuries, even. With its warm climate, beautiful scenery, and a fierce reputation for being a classy gambling venue (a tuxedo was a requirement for several of these places), Monaco was something of a haven for the rich tourist, an intriguing glimpse into how the richest of the rich lived their lives every day. The wealthy inhabitants who held property in Monaco thrived on the fact that they paid little to no taxes and that they were treated to spectacular events one in a while that would be a rare sight anywhere else—most notably a famous Formula-series race that took place throughout the city proper was set up once a year, drawing in interested sightseers like lions to a carcass.

Surely a city of such prestige should have been unaffordable to someone like Larsen, whose payroll as a senator would normally be too inefficient to afford anything in Monaco. However, after the Reaper War, Monaco had found itself lacking in many inhabitants, due to either them having been evacuated or killed in the chaos, a fate that had practically affected every single major city on the planet. Larsen, being quite the master negotiator and something of a ruthless opportunist, seized upon this chance, as horrible as it was, to secure himself the best real estate in town since he knew that all the properties here were sorely hurting for cash as a result of there not being enough tenants to receive rent from, so he correctly figured that the owners of his apartment of choice would have no other option but to accept his severely reduced rental rate.

Money. It was the grand equalizer. Empires rose and fell by the coin. Garner enough wealth and one could rise above the masses in stature. Larsen had been fortunate to have lived life as a poor man and as a rich man so he could at least sympathize with the mindsets of every constituent. He figured the experience served him well, though he had no inclination to go back to living in poverty at all.

Larsen, being a prudent and proud man, was pleased with that he had built up his capital with his own effort. Careful investments here, short a stock there. It had been a tedious process, sure, but his massive fortune had been won with cleverness and cunning. It took actual effort to obtain it, which is why Larsen always seemed to have a disdain for the people who came into wealth rather than going out and getting wealthy by themselves. Larsen always felt that his character was bolder and more diverse from his shared experiences and that the people who merely received an inheritance from a rich family member would never get out of their initial immaturity to money.

It certainly explained why he loathed Koenig so much.

The elevator doors parted to reveal the chalk-white walls of his penthouse. The same granite tiles that were in the lobby existed on this floor as well. Impeccable marble statues of Greek gods and gorgeous paintings spanning multiple eras flanked both sides of the hallway, genuine articles that Larsen had been accumulating over his lifetime. Larsen once had an appraiser come to check the value of his collected art; he had been pleased to find out that he was in possession of one of the most valuable art collections in the galaxy, worth more than a billion credits in their value. Larsen appreciated the work behind the paintings that he collected—they represented imaginations more vivid than his own. Just staring into the wash of colors never failed to drive him into a ponderous trance. What kind of masters were these people that could display such beauty and terror with the seemingly insignificant stroke of a brush? Power in color. Larsen was envious of the skill.

Striding through a smoky glass partition, Larsen carelessly tossed his jacket towards the automated coat hangers at the front closet and made his way to the kitchen for something to drink. He tapped at the polished obsidian counter to gradually bring the lights up, a candlelit equivalent. Quite cozy. Now, for the drink. Coming home for the weekend after parliament adjourned always found Larsen in a drained mood—a drink usually helped him to relax better.

But before he could tab the crystalline quartz doors of his liquor cabinet, a shadow off in the corner of his eye, obscuring the glow of downtown, drew his attention. Larsen felt his breath catch in his throat and he slowly slid his hand toward a cabinet just below him, reaching inside so slowly as not to make a sound. His heartbeat resounded loudly inside his head. He felt the base and natural flow of anger rise up within him and he cruelly squinted his eyes.

His hand found the object he was looking for in the cabinet. Cold metal fit neatly against his palm.

Moving fast for someone his age, Larsen whirled a pistol behind him, flicking the safety off in a simultaneous motion, and aimed at the pinpricks of glowing dots that were seated at the far end of the African blackwood table, the intruder's back to the window.

But the shadow did not blink. Nor twitch. Nor speak.

Larsen lurched forward as he prepared to fire, but at the last second caught himself, his eyes widening in recognition.

"Son of a bitch," Larsen breathed out as he set the pistol on the kitchen island, his shoulders noticeably slumping. He clutched at his chest and glared at the large shadow. "How the fuck did you get in here?"

The Legionnaire leaned forward, the glow from the far away lamps gently glinting off of the armor plating upon his chest. Muted hues of grays and blacks clashed with molten silver upon the cyborg's construction. The light from his oculi narrowed slightly and the murkiness of the view behind the transparent front faceplate was hard for Larsen to make out at this distance. A soft breath, an automated inhalation, escaped from the Legionnaire's vocabulator and the brute's fingers gently rested upon the expensive wood on the table.

"From the front door," the Legionnaire responded matter-of-factly. "Where else?"

Frustrated, Larsen glanced back to the hallway that led to the elevator. "The door is triple encrypted. Bio-sensor, DNA, and omni-tool authentication."

"I know."

"And so you just waltzed on in?"

"No system is foolproof," the Legionnaire smugly leaned back, throwing himself into shadow once again. "Your door was merely an inconvenience."

Larsen did not like the way the Legionnaire appeared to be bragging at the ease of his break-in. The cyborg had always had an acerbic trait to him, an inkling to carry out petty rebellions purely to spite Larsen. The Legionnaire's behavior was successful in irking Larsen from time to time, and Larsen knew that the Legionnaire was merely testing the limits of control that had been imposed upon him, to make Larsen rue the day he ever had requested the Legionnaire's services in the first place.

Muttering to himself, Larsen turned away and after some time deciding, procured a bottle of liquor from his cabinet. Something strong—an Islay scotch. Larsen poured himself a few fingers into a crystal glass and took an immediate sip. Peat. Smoke. A hint of sea salt. The senator smacked his lips and lifted his glass in a mock salute to the Legionnaire.

"Want one?" he asked, knowing full well the Legionnaire could not consume regular liquids.

The Legionnaire did not rise to the bait and simply stayed silent, his red-eyed glare seemingly increasing in intensity.

Larsen just swirled his scotch in his glass for a bit before walking over to the table, but he did not yet turn all the lights on, letting the ones in the kitchen warm his back. "If you're here to break the good news to me, I hate to say that I've already been informed."

"I assumed as much," the Legionnaire said, keeping his voice even.

Larsen gave a dirty chuckle before he pulled out a seat for him to sit down at the same table. "It's all over the news. Defense Minister Steven Hackett, murdered on the side of the road in the outskirts of Berlin. The press is having a field day and the extranet is ablaze with the usual hacks and conspiracy theorists—the one time where the kooks have welcome timing."

The Legionnaire did not adjust his position on his own chair, but Larsen had the suspicion that he was pleased at his handiwork. "I trust it was all carried out to your satisfaction?"

"Very much so," Larsen admitted. Credit where credit was due, the Legionnaire had achieved his objective quite handedly. "Alliance Intelligence is taking over the investigation. They're claiming jurisdiction for the time being. This was expected—the murder of a noted admiral, a war hero, the goddamned _Defense Minister,_ was not expected to go unnoticed. A separate committee in the Senate is now plying Alliance Intelligence for any information that they have in the investigation. Senator Yaris from the UNAS is spearheading his own subpoena at the moment."

"Leads?" the Legionnaire uttered, his head tilting at a fraction of an angle.

"Going nowhere," Larsen smirked as he took a sip of his scotch. "I've got an insider in the agency. He leaks stuff to me on occasion, all off-the-record. They're operating on piss-poor evidence. Intelligence recovered the murder weapon, the pistol that shot the admiral, and found the fingerprints on it. They also found DNA at the site that seemed to corroborate some of their initial assessments."

"The _planted_ murder weapon," the Legionnaire corrected. "I take it the forged fingerprints have got Alliance Intelligence completely fooled?"

"Hook, line, and sinker. Your team was certainly thorough. They planted enough foreign DNA on the ground and, with the addition of the faked fingerprints on the pistol you dropped, Intelligence seems to be closing in on a small-time batarian gang that's based over in Albania. Carcinogens in the soil deposits seem to be successful in linking the two groups. Or so I was told. All in all, it seems that all the 'evidence' that you left behind was plausible enough to draw Intelligence's attention on the wrong party. That will help us down the road."

Larsen drained his glass with barely a wince and firmly smacked the empty vessel down onto the table as the Legionnaire remained silent. "Speaking of down the road, how are we on the package you retrieved from the salarians?"

"I'm told that our scientists are progressing on it as we speak," the Legionnaire recanted smoothly. "They have not run into any unforeseen problems that I am aware of. Last I heard was that they were focused on trying to replicate the access codes required to detonate the weapon."

"How long is that supposed to take?"

"A few more days. Estimated."

Larsen gave a satisfied nod. "Excellent. Most excellent. Right on schedule, it seems." He folded his hands in front of him, waiting to see if the Legionnaire had anything else to say. The cyborg was unable give any sort of organic tic that might indicate his mood, but Larsen had a sixth sense for deciphering the Legionnaire's mindset, and right now he could tell that he was uneasy. Something was vexing the soldier… and Larsen had just the idea of what it could be.

"I'm assuming," Larsen said, smugly wishing to test his theory, "that you'll be wanting to get back onto your primary objective of retrieving Shepard as soon as possible."

The Legionnaire spoke in his two-toned voice after a pause of about a second, "Yes, that is affirmative."

"' _Yes, that is affirmative,'_ " Larsen snidely mocked, distantly wishing to draw a reaction out of the mechanical creature, but was reveling in his safety despite his goading. "You're as predicable as your quarry. Does Shepard really mean that much to you?"

The Legionnaire's fingers tapped loudly upon the table and there was a metallic whirring sound as the cyborg slightly leaned forward. "Don't try to comprehend my motives, senator."

"Worried I might not like what you're thinking?"

"Only that your attempt for understanding will end in failure."

Larsen's hand instinctively twitched towards his omni-tool upon hearing the Legionnaire's dark tone. The program he had installed there had a special switched designed to punish the cyborg in case he showed signs of resistance. This time, Larsen held off on depressing it, but he was still a bit unnerved that the Legionnaire was barely masking his open hostility. Next time, he would not hold back.

"I know you're not in the habit of leaving assignments half-finished, but the strategy was entirely dependent on you easing off the pressure on Shepard for a bit. Now that he's off Rannoch, you'll stand a better chance of picking him up elsewhere."

"I _had_ a better chance," the Legionnaire growled as he continued to lean forward menacingly, but the attempt to intimidate Larsen was for naught. "Back on Rannoch."

"Yet he slipped your clutches."

"A temporary setback."

"Irrelevant, nonetheless," Larsen waved a hand dismissively. "Whether or not you would have apprehended the man on Rannoch matters little to our agenda. With the contingencies we have in place, there is hardly any chance that Shepard should slip through our fingers, now that we have the advantage to press the man on all fronts. Fear not, Legionnaire. You'll have your chance soon enough."

The Legionnaire's unblinking eyes were so concentrated upon Larsen, giving the cyborg a pensive quality. With a slow but deliberate motion, the Legionnaire turned his body slightly to the left, his large hand reaching out to pluck a digital photo frame from the center of the table. The cyborg delicately turned the frame over in time to see a likeness of two people, a woman and a young girl, both dressed very well—the former in a striped designer suit, the latter in a yellow flowery blouse—the two situated on what appeared to be a pier that extended out upon a calm, sapphire-blue lake. Both were smiling broadly, the child reaching out towards the camera with laughter on her lips. The shining fingers gripping the frame tightened in interest and the direction of the Legionnaire's blazing oculi finally turned away from Larsen to examine the object.

"The… other senators," the Legionnaire spoke haltingly as he continued to look upon the picture with interest, "I assume you're not facing any trouble from them regarding your decision to bring Shepard in?"

Fiercely, Larsen reached out and yanked the picture out of the Legionnaire's hand. He smacked the frame down on the table, obscuring it from view, so hard that it nearly shattered the glass face. Larsen's face contorted into a mask of fury for a split-second, enraged at the brief intrusion the Legionnaire had dared to demonstrate.

Coming back to his senses, Larsen took a deep breath and slid the frame out of reach before he adjusted his collar. "They're coming around," he mustered. "There's some grumblings to be had, sure, but none of them are stupid enough to break ranks, either privately or publicly. The base will crucify them if they do that."

A muted warble escaped the Legionnaire's vocabulator, the picture frame now forgotten. "Partisanship. A double-edged sword, clearly."

"We're the majority party in all branches of the government. No one wants to be the catalyst for such an insignificant decision like this—bringing Shepard in—that could potentially split the party. When we control the government, everyone will contort themselves past the realm of comfort to keep that control."

The Legionnaire was not above having the amusing thought that, if he had the capability to betray Larsen, recording this conversation and posting it to the extranet would destroy the man's reputation in an instant. How fortuitous it would be to finally retain some leverage over the man who had done nothing but dangle promises over his head for years like he was some sort of lap dog. However, he was programmed for loyalty, so his mutinous thoughts could only exist for mere moments in his head before they were forcibly erased to keep him on task.

"And once Shepard has provided his damning testimony," the Legionnaire cautiously started, "will that be enough to garner my final compensation?"

The stone-faced look that Larsen put on was enough to make what little blood the Legionnaire had left in his body come to a boil.

"Care to specify?" Larsen asked callously.

The Legionnaire was not stupid. Larsen was just playing dumb, to get him to slip up. To make a sudden and unwise move. The Legionnaire was not going to fall for this little trick, no matter how much he wanted to rise to the challenge. The thought of strangling his superior right in the room lingered in his mind's eye, but as much as his hands longed to twitch in Larsen's direction, his brain refused to issue the command.

"Specification is not necessary," the Legionnaire said evenly. "Seeing as you know what I'm talking about. My final compensation. My willing termination."

" _Ah_ ," Larsen pretended to remember. "Of course. The one thing you want most."

If the Legionnaire had the ability to smash this table to bits, the one thing separating them, he would have done it several minutes ago. "I've been fulfilling your vision for twelve years, senator. After Shepard is dealt with, my purpose will have been reached. You would have no use for me anymore."

"Yet, until I attain the maximum amount of legal power on this planet," Larsen levelled a finger, "I will _always_ have a use for you. But we are not there yet. Your work has been exemplary—a boon to Chimera and myself. You have been instrumental in setting the course of history for centuries to come. Because of what you've done for me, I _will_ repay you in kind when the time comes."

" _When?_ " the Legionnaire pressed. "I want my answer."

A cruel little smirk fluttered over Larsen's face. "You will know when the time comes. Honestly, I'm hurt by this ungratefulness, Legionnaire. It was thanks to Chimera that you are still living in the first place. When we found you on that station in the middle of space, your bones smashed to bits, a gigantic hole in your stomach, you were nearly dead. We brought you back from the brink. We saved you. And this is the thanks you give us?"

"For a life like this?" the Legionnaire uttered as he took a moment to glance upon his pristine body, raising his arms upward as his fingers grasped at invisible bonds. "Immortality was not how I envisioned it to be."

"So you selfishly want death."

"This was never my choice to begin with. I was never asked for my opinion."

Now Larsen laughed as he leaned back against the leather padding of his chair. "In this business, our opinions represent very little in terms of collateral. I thought you would have learned that by now."

The Legionnaire said, "We are all expendable in the grand scheme of things, senator. I've accepted that fact. Have you?"

Partially covering his mouth with his hand, Larsen twitched his thumb a bit before responding. "I have my own part to play, I know this. I'm amenable to the grand design… and the one who created the design in the first place. But you're still isolated from that tier. If you even knew of the consequences of failure, to face _his_ wrath…"

The implication would be unsaid, unfinished for the rest of the evening. Larsen then reached down below the table and withdrew the chromed pistol he had pulled out earlier. He hefted the weapon a few times, watching the reflection of the dining room distort across its warped surface before he set it down upon the wood of the table, creating a heavy _clunk_. Larsen locked eyes with the Legionnaire and gave a deliberate push with his arm, sending the pistol sliding neatly over to the cyborg, whose metallic hand caught the grip in a crisp movement.

"I have one more favor to ask of you before you pursue Shepard," Larsen said as he steepled his hands while resting his elbows upon the table.

"One more catch?" the Legionnaire retorted somewhat acidly.

"Patience. This task benefits us both. Apparently, the late Admiral Hackett saw fit to send over a partial dossier comprised of sensitive documents and recordings that he managed to obtain over the years to a political consulting firm based in Paris by the name of Pax Informatio. These documents apparently have the potential to tie Chimera's activities to us—"

"To _you_ ," the Legionnaire clarified, sounding a bit smug himself.

Larsen scowled before continuing. "Yes, to me. The point is, Pax Informatio makes a living by controlling data, and if there is even a vague suspicion that they have even a fraction of what comprises this dossier, then that will be enough to derail our current progress and potentially destroy everything we had hoped to build. You understand? Data is this firm's specialty. If they have the files and manage to decipher what they mean, they could either sell the information to anyone willing to pay, or donate the documents to the media for them to broadcast to the galaxy."

"Careless of you," the Legionnaire rumbled. "Hackett is no longer with us yet he has still found a way to compromise you from beyond the grave. Intriguing."

"Which is why I'm tasking you to correct this problem before it gets out of hand, _riktig?_ After that, Shepard is yours to pursue."

The Legionnaire lifted the pistol in his hand as he considered Larsen's words. "Any particular methodologies you would prefer be performed in Paris?"

Larsen's mouth pursed before a smile curled at the corners. "All up to you. In fact, I would not be troubled if you chose to create as much collateral damage as possible."

The Legionnaire gave a quiet nod in response, affirmation of his orders, when a creaking sound from the entryway suddenly drew the cyborg's attention. The metallic armor plates upon the beast's collar twitched, making a tinny clattering noise, and his neck snapped his head in the direction of the sound. Larsen similarly turned in his chair, his expression one of slight annoyance.

Shadows were lightly dancing in the lit corridor that led to the dining room. Someone was in the apartment. The Legionnaire raised his arm up in an instant, the one that held the chromed pistol. The shadows in the hallway split and merged as the light from all the lamps cast the outline of the approaching person in all directions.

There was a tender clicking noise as the Legionnaire partially pulled on the double-action trigger—nails on teeth—bringing the gun to within a half-pound of force needed to fire.

A darkened outline then appeared at the end of the hall. Male. Human. Medium build. Larsen could not make out their features for all the light was at this person's back, throwing their face into shadow. He squinted as this person seemed to be casually taking stock of the room… almost like this place was familiar to them. The tight sensation in Larsen's chest was rapidly fading and his previously buzzing head was finding clarity, all of a sudden. Just a few more seconds and he would be able to appraise this person in fully.

The Legionnaire, however, did not even give pause.

"Wait, _don't_ —" Larsen tried to blurt out, but it was too late.

The pistol opened fire in a roaring blast. Fire lit the dark kitchen for a split-second, a rapid-fire burst of a strobe that hurled light at great force. The noise boomed in Larsen's ears and the shockwave pulverized his head, causing him to feel dizzy. He yelled and clasped at his ears instinctively.

The intruder jerked backward as the bullet caught him in the head—a perfect shot. A dark mass burst from the back of the man's head and he collapsed on the floor, out of sight behind the kitchen island.

The ringing silence became an unceasing assault on Larsen as he gritted his teeth and groaned as a high-pitched whine started to emit in his ears. The air reeked of cordite. His nostrils burned.

The Legionnaire stood, pistol smoking, as he held the weapon at the ready in case he needed to make another shot, but Larsen stumbled to feet as well, eyes tightly shut, and barking mad.

"You… fucking _idiot!_ " Larsen screamed as he continued to clutch at his head. "Right by my ear! I can't hear a fucking thing! What the fuck is the _matter_ with you, firing a gun that close to my head?!"

An annoyed rumble escaped the Legionnaire but he continued to stand vigilant, even after Larsen had thrown on the lights, creating a cascade of illumination as the penthouse floor became warm and cozy from the newfound light.

Drunkenly, Larsen wobbled over to where the intruder lay, but not before he gave a furious keen as he saw that the brains of the man that the Legionnaire had shot had been splattered over an original abstract painting that hung on the wall near the stainless steel oven, the geometric shapes in the acrylic colors suddenly awash with a fountain of thick red blood and chunky black gore, muting the honey-yellow hues that comprised the basic foundation of the painting.

"My _de Kooning!_ " Larsen roared as he lamented the ruination of the piece before appraising the body on the ground, a puddle of blood spreading out from what remained of his head. "My _cook! Tikens sønn!_ "

Larsen was so beside himself that he was lapsing into his native Norwegian without even realizing it.

The Legionnaire finally walked over, his finger still resting on the trigger. He glanced over the counter in an uncaring manner, staring blankly at Larsen's ex-cook, who no longer had an identifiable face, thanks to his handiwork. "He failed to identify himself," he said plainly, not at all trying to defend his actions but to point out the flaw in Larsen's security. He seemed to almost be finding glee in causing Larsen such misfortune. "There was no indication that you had enlisted a private staff for your abode."

"You dumb fuck! Do you honestly think I make my own _meals?!_ " Larsen was spitting venom, the veins in his neck standing out as his face was turning the same color of a tomato. "You just killed the finest sous chef in the entire European continent! _And_ you ruined my Willem de Kooning painting! Hundreds of millions of credits, that was worth! You have got to be the… _aw, shit, I still can't hear any-goddamned-thing_."

Frantically, Larsen resumed rubbing at an ear in a vain effort to gain some semblance of his hearing back. He turned away from the cyborg, now tending to himself as he muttered the occasional swear word to himself as the ringing in his ears continued to sound.

The Legionnaire had already detached himself from this conversation while Larsen was ranting. The accoutrements of the ultra-rich were useless topics for him to discuss. He cared not a lick about Larsen's tastes in art or food, and the deduction in the man's collection meant very little to him. While Larsen was screaming, the Legionnaire just smoothly holstered his pistol as he eyed the doorway in preparation to leave.

But Larsen was not done chewing the Legionnaire out just yet.

"Well, don't just stand there!" Larsen bellowed as he gestured to the cyborg whilst trying not to step in the gory remains of his cook. "Clean this mess up!"

Internally, the Legionnaire gave a scoff of derision.

"I'm not your maid, senator," the Legionnaire responded curtly as he stepped over the body he had just shot. "You've got other lackeys to deal with this sort of thing."

Now heading back down the hallway, the Legionnaire strode at a brisk pace past the lit lamps and works of untouched (so far) art as he headed down the tile avenue, his heavy legs making firm and wet clomps with meaty echoes. Larsen, momentarily dumbstruck, watched the Legionnaire depart his presence for a few seconds before coming to his sense and gesticulating wildly at the retreating cyborg before erupting into his tirade once again.

"You indelicate brute!" he screamed, continuing to hold a hand to his ear, a sign that he was still partially deafened. "You put one more toe out of line, kill any more of my staff, or wreck any more of my art, and I'll have your organs removed from that shell you call a body, and have them hung on—"

Larsen's threat-laced diatribe went ignored as far as the Legionnaire could muster. The human's voice was finally cut off when the Legionnaire reached the elevator lobby, the glass partition doors sliding silently shut behind him. Uncaring to the plight of his overseer, the cyborg did not spare Larsen a glance back, since he was in the process of committing all of his mental resources towards formulating the details of his Paris mission.

But since the Legionnaire was in a fouler mood than normal and that the meeting with Larsen had irked him something fierce, the cyborg was in a position to be more influenced by his inclinations than normal. Flanking the elevator lobby on both sides were two statues made out of immaculate white marble, each projecting a grotesque image of what appeared to be angels with skulls for faces. Their empty eyes leered at the Legionnaire and their hands groped outward, perhaps as a way to feel their way forward, or as a mute plea to their Creator. The Legionnaire, with the nuances of fine art lost on him, simply saw this as another way to irk Larsen even more so he simply reached out and plunked off one of the angel's stone fingers with an effortless _snap_ , the sound quick and clean like the cracking of fine china.

A mirthless chuckle squirmed its way through the Legionnaire's ruined throat, and his metallic fingers opened to let the marble finger fall to earth, whereupon it shattered into dust and bits as it impacted with the tile below.

As he stepped into the elevator, which had finally arrived at the penthouse floor, the Legionnaire noted that it felt good to relish these petty torments from time to time.

* * *

 _Alchera_

A jagged canyon of dust and ice. Carbon and crystallized water, frozen in time. A powdery mix comprised the ground underfoot, easily caking to Roahn's boots. Light and ashy snow was easily buffeted in the air, held aloft from the slightly weaker gravity. Blocks of ice cracked and crumbled within the depression Roahn was standing in, creating boulders more than five times as tall as she was.

It was night on Alchera, but the sky was still brilliantly ablaze from the infinite collection of stars above. They formed a wide band, glittering optimistically, as they sparkled like motes of glass in sand.

Impacted within the walls of the canyon, though, were gigantic bits of metal and polymer armor that speared through the rock and the ice. A ship had crashed here and at a great velocity long ago. A frigate, from the size of the debris. It must have screamed through the air, fire trailing behind it like a comet, as it plummeted to the ground. When it had hit, the remains of the ship had probably created an enormous cloud of dust, stomping a shockwave that had reverberated in a mile radius from the point of impact.

The innards of the ship were strewn around the gorge, having been dispersed from the crash. Curved supports molded around the ice walls, looking a lot like ribs to Roahn. Frayed and torn wires hung limply from shattered rafters, not a hint of voltage running through them. Massive chunks of what appeared to be the remains of a CIC lay in a crater, the sides of the depression in this case were completely smooth. Melted a hole right through the top ice layer—the entire wreck must have been white-hot when it landed here.

It must have been quite the sight to behold.

Roahn knelt down on the ground and picked up a jagged piece of metal. Dirty snow buffeted off the molten piece as she examined it. The alloy part had been scorched from the fires of reentry, but it had been colored white once. The coloration now was scarred by permanent streaks of black, the edges of the armoring razor-sharp.

She looked up from the item she had been looking at, only to find the outline of her father continuing to walk away from her, having gained considerable distance while she had been dawdling. Annoyance creeping up on her for his perceived callousness, Roahn hopped down from the slight incline she had been perched upon, breaking out a jog to catch up.

Running felt odd. There was a sort of lurch to Roahn's steps every time she lifted her leg. It was not hindering her speed, but it was a slight enough effect to drive a pestering feeling in her brain. Gravity must be weaker on this planet than on Rannoch, she reasoned.

"Don't go too fast, Roahn," she heard her father say over the comm, despite the fact that he did not even turn his head backwards. That damn sixth sense of his.

Glowering, she bit her tongue. Instead, she simply looked down at her feet and propelled herself forward even harder. She moved her arms in time with her legs, getting the sensation that she was gliding over the ground. In seconds, she would be on top of her father's position. Easy.

She was within three strides of her father before her toe caught upon a very solid rock that had been partially been buried underneath the soft, frozen surface. There was no time for her to cry out even as she felt herself toppling forward in slow motion. She hit the ground on her stomach, but the impact was lessened thanks to the difference in gravity, although she did slide along the ground a few feet, leaving an impressive skid mark from her body.

Somewhat embarrassed at the pratfall, Roahn grunted as she lifted herself up from the ground, dusting her hood off from the snow that had caught in the fibers. Her auditory sensors then picked up a crunching noise and two black boots soon entered her vision to the right.

Strong arms reached down and bodily lifted her up, planting her upright. Roahn looked up and saw her father's face, completely encased within a protective suit of his own. Unlike Roahn's helmet, Shepard's was mostly clear, shaped like a bubble, and warmly lit from the interior, projecting his face clearly to anyone.

That meant Roahn could not miss the frown currently on her father's face.

"I _warned_ you to slow down," Shepard softly chided as he knelt down, checking his daughter for injuries. "Why didn't you listen to me?"

Roahn resisted the urge to roll her eyes, figuring that her dad was overreacting again. She lightly pushed his hands away as she took a step back. "I'm not hurt, you know."

Shepard's suit, sealed from head to toe, made a crinkling noise whenever he adjusted his limbs. Shepard sighed, his hands clenching and making a straining noise.

"I told you, I'm _fine_ ," Roahn sulked, feeling embarrassed from her father's withering stare.

"Right now you are," Shepard stood back up. "But I don't want to keep worrying about you all the time, Roahn. What if you end up in a situation where you're _not_ fine? How do you think I'd feel then?" When Roahn did not answer right away, Shepard continued. "This is a planet that is constantly below freezing. The air is so poisonous that one whiff of it would render us unconscious. If either of us have a breach in our suits here… that's it. So I will ask you again, how do you think I would feel if you got hurt when you could have prevented such a thing from happening all along?"

Roahn kicked her feet in the thin layer of snow, sending up a powdery wash of frozen liquid.

"I… don't know," Roahn admitted as she looked down at the ground. She was keenly aware of her father still appraising her and she lifted her head to meet his gaze, eyes tilted upward in apprehension.

"Yes?" Shepard asked.

"It's weird."

"What's weird?"

"Hearing that you care."

Shepard had no idea how to respond to such a thing. Inwardly he winced, not at all missing the rebuke in her daughter's words, but also from the knowledge that he had not been behaving up to a standard that Roahn would have accepted.

But there was still time to make things right. That, he knew for certain.

"I… I've always cared, Roahn," he defended with a rough voice. "But maybe I just didn't show it as well as I could have."

"I know that," Roahn offered immediately, her body language sensitive, almost as an apology from showing her barbs too soon. "Is there ever going to be a time when you're _not_ going to worry about me?"

Her father gave a sad smile, emotion crackling through his grizzled features. "I'm your father. That should answer your question."

In spite of herself, Roahn felt the tiny tug of a smile also grace her lips. Nine years of having to endure this cold exterior of a man and only now was the sharp and warm wit that resided in her father finally starting to come out of his its shell. Many people that Roahn had watched in interviews about her father had said that he possessed the uncanny ability to continually lock in his attention upon a sole person while talking, making it seem like they were the most important individual in the room while still retaining a commandeering presence himself. Every day the legends seemed to have a bit more truth added to them.

The knot in her chest began to unclench.

Both of them, now proceeding at a similar pace this time, navigated their way through a landslide of shattered boulders made entirely out of translucent ice. Thick cracks danced below the surface of the boulders, a tangle of destruction lurking just below the crust.

Admittedly, Roahn did not know in the beginning why her father had chosen to land on Alchera. The planet was a wasteland, just an endless expanse of a dry, frozen desert. Quite a stark difference from the warm and moist climate of Virmire. No settlements, barely little in the way of resources… yet there was something about this world that struck a nameless terror in her father. She had seen it on his face when they were entering orbit: the subtle tightness in his cheek, that far-away look in his eyes, the shallowness of his breathing. Something had happened here that had profoundly affected him.

Roahn now had a good idea of what that was and it had to do with this wreck right in front of her. Just as she was about to ask her father precisely which ship all this debris belonged to, they rounded a thick ice column that opened up onto a flat and dusty plain.

There, Roahn beheld her answer.

It rose up from the jagged ground, three stories tall. The smooth curve of the outer hull of the ship in question. The frigate would not be identifiable upon first glance were it not for the fact that the majority of the paint miraculously survived the brutal assault from reentry.

The name of the ship, in all capital letters, still was legible after all these years.

N… O… R… M… A...

" _Normandy_ ," Roahn whispered.

Completely thrown, Roahn turned on the spot, taking everything in a different light. This… after all this time, this is where the storied ship had ended up? Smashed to pieces on the side of a wayward planet? But this ship was a legend! The Normandy SR-1 was one of the most iconic ships ever built and it was just lying here of all places? Roahn clenched her fists in anger. This ship deserved better. It deserved an audience. Adulation. A place in a museum. Anywhere but here!

Shepard raised a hand, palm upward, and a soft golden light began to emit from his tool. A mock-up of the ship, rendered in loving detail, slowly rotated upon a fixed point, bathed in the orange color.

"She certainly was a beautiful ship," Shepard whispered, voice lined with sadness. "Seeing her again… in this state… really makes me miss the adventures we shared on the old girl. The missions we carried out on that thing… Noveria, Virmire, Ilos. The people that it brought together. The SR-1 was something, Roahn. Something special. One of a kind in her own right."

Roahn had to agree. Compared to the meek wreckage strewn around her, the model that Shepard was using for reference painted a completely different picture of the ship in question. The original _Normandy_ was a sleek and elegant craft, with a curved hull that looked like it could rake the very fabric of space open. The engines and ailerons were directly connected upon the wings, giving the _Normandy_ the appearance of a bird-of-prey in a dive bomb towards a hapless target. It was hard to make out in the hologram, but the paint scheme matched the piece of broken vessel that Roahn was standing in front of right at this moment, most notably the section where the craft's name was spelled out in its blocky font.

Right in front of the craft, standing alone amongst the field of dust between the ship and Roahn, was a tall, golden monument made out of a shiny and brilliant metal. Colored titanium, Roahn had to guess. The statue had to be more than twice as tall as she was. Even at this distance, Roahn could make out the fine detailing of what the statue represented: a model of the Normandy leaving a curved trail in ascension, a final grasp towards the stars above.

Yet those same stars would be hanging overhead above the stricken ship for all time now.

"A memorial?" Roahn asked but did not move closer out of respect, not wanting her footprints to break up the pristine flatness of the snow-sprinkled plain.

"So that people would know what happened," Shepard murmured next to her. "If they ever find this place."

"I can see an inscription on the bottom. What does it say?"

"' _Per aspera ad astra_ ,'" Shepard recited. " _'Through hardship to the stars_.' A monument to the crewmembers that died when the ship was destroyed."

Roahn traced a line in the snow absentmindedly. "What language was that passage in?"

"Latin. A dead human language. All Alliance personnel have that inscription upon their memorials. It's sort of our succinct way of providing respect in our epitaph."

But then something else hit her, something her father had previously mentioned clicked in her head. Overwhelmed, she sat down on the ground, sending up shockwaves of snow as she could only stare at the ruined hull of one of her favorite vessels.

"This was it," she said. "This was where you… where you _died_. The first time."

There was a creaking sound from Shepard's suit as he sat down beside her. The interior helmet lamps cast parts of Shepard's face in an odd sort of shadow, caricaturing his expression if he craned his neck the wrong way. He considered Roahn for a bit before pointing a finger up to the sky.

"It happened up there, somewhere," he mused. "No one knows for sure where the exact spot was. The only log with that information is somewhere on the ground here… smashed to bits and unusable."

"How did you survive?" Roahn asked, hardly able to wrap her head around the fact that her father was next to her, completely alive and well, while the Normandy lay crumpled around her.

"You could probably say that I didn't," Shepard flexed a hand for emphasis. "Bringing someone back from the dead is not an everyday occurrence. It kind of puts things in perspective, realizing that you survived when others did not."

The distant look in Shepard's eyes kept encroaching. He leaned forward slightly, folding his hands over his lap. He pondered to himself for a few precious seconds. Keeping the details scant on how his resurrection took place was an aspect that Shepard was determined to not trouble Roahn about. How could the girl understand that her father had been rendered to a slab of meat on a table after the Collectors had spaced him? How was he to tell her that he was only alive because of the advanced implants Cerberus had stuck inside him, implants with such cutting-edge technology that they still mystified professionals to this day. Was she even ready for such imagery?

When Shepard had died, the various injuries that he had accumulated had been grievous. His skin had either been charred or melted off from the attack, all of it regrown over his exposed muscle and bone. His skeleton had been shattered into pieces, complete disarray, which had to be rebuilt over the course of several months. His blood had to be replaced. New organs had to be cloned. And everything had to be accepted by his body—if any piece of the puzzle was biologically rejected, then his return would have never come to fruition.

A million to one odds. And yet here he sat on the scene. How could he possibly impart such a monumental weight onto Roahn?

Cold began to grip at the edge of Roahn's suit while she sat next to her father and she suppressed a shiver. She flexed her fingers and toes to stave off the chill, noting that her enviro-suit's built in heater was struggling to keep her core temperature consistent.

"Twenty dead," Shepard continued in a grim tone. "Twenty people died when the Normandy went down. I was the twenty-first person. Yet I somehow managed to claw myself out of that mess. All because other people had plans for me."

 _Cerberus_ , was the unsaid implication that the two of them understood already.

"They thought you still had the potential for more," Roahn found herself saying. "And they were right."

"Yes," Shepard fiddled with his thumbs. "They certainly were." He then adopted a ponderous face as he looked onto the corpse of his ship, eyes drooping mournfully. "But I don't know if I would have made the choice to save myself, if I had been asked to give my opinion back then, Roahn."

"Wh-What?" the girl stammered, horrified.

"Wait just a moment," Shepard assured her. "When I came to, finally, after two years of being dead, the first thing that I thought was: _Why me?_ Back then, I had only thought of myself as a simple soldier who just happened to have stumbled onto the most nefarious plot the galaxy had ever known. The magnitude of what I was worth to people had never resonated on me before then. But when I learned that so much time and money had been spent on me, trying to get me to wake up, I was dumbfounded. Others saw me as more than a soldier. They saw me as a symbol." Shepard blithely shook his head. "As a soldier, I would have wanted them to pick someone else. As a symbol, I would have relished the second chance. But it seemed like I never truly knew what I was to anyone for the longest time. It took a lot of thought and the patience of others to finally help me on that front."

Struggling to rise to his feet, Shepard made a pained face as he got up, Roahn mimicking his actions in a flash. The man continued staring at the ruins of his ship the entire time, feeling his body sink lower and lower from the weight of his memories.

"Roahn," Shepard said, still not directly looking at her, "there will be moments in your life that will define you as a person until the end of time. Perhaps this right here… my supposed death… was the one event that changed my entire outlook on life. It changed everything, to be honest."

The girl seemed to shrink back a little. "I just hope that _I_ don't have to die for my life to suddenly change," she quipped in a wavering voice.

Shepard politely chuckled at that. "I hope so too. I wouldn't wish that experience on anyone. But what it led to, I have no regrets." When Roahn stared up at him with a confused look in her eyes, Shepard finally appraised his daughter, his features softening ever so slightly. "The transition from an Alliance marine to a Cerberus lackey was not an easy one, by any means. But it did have an unintended side effect that proved to be a happy accident. You see, the Alliance doesn't like it when officers fraternize with their subordinates—for very good reasons, obviously. Cerberus didn't have that sort of structure in place, which sort of opened the door for… other opportunities to arise."

"You mean… that was when you and mom..." Roahn started, eyes widening.

Shepard nodded. "We realized that we had more in common than we figured during that period. After everything that had happened, all the experiences that we had shared, it became the most obvious thing in the galaxy that I loved your mother. I'm just thankful that she loved me back. But I guess," Shepard added, "it only took me dying to realize that I had strong feelings for Tali and that I had found out for myself that I wanted to be around her as more than a friend. Just one more thing that Cerberus didn't anticipate at the time, heh."

Roahn gave her father a mirthful look. "You exploited a _loophole_. Keelah."

"Hey, I thought it worked out well," Shepard defended with a lame shrug. "I fell very hard for your mother, Roahn. I was just lucky that she was falling for me at the same time."

Roahn gazed at her suited hand, trying to imagine her gray skin below the infernal covering, resigned to the fate that she would barely be able to look upon herself fully. She wracked her brain, trying to imagine how her father managed to see past this barrier.

"What drew you to mom?" Roahn croaked out as she slowly blinked in the silence of the planet. "What did _she_ have that other people did not?"

Shepard bit his lip and partially turned away as he clasped his hands behind his back. "Where could I possibly start? I don't know… maybe it was the fact that she always had this… _enthusiasm_ about her. I don't mean to say that she was cheerful every waking hour of every day, but that she had this intense desire to prove herself. She had this drive to show people that she mattered as a _person_ , that she was an asset to the crew. But it was her selflessness that made me take notice. With Tali, her actions were never all about her. They would be for a crewmate, for the good of the ship, the collective, and so on. It was her generosity that was so attractive. That sort of mentality, such an inherent and unknowing drive to express her individuality, was not at all very common amongst humans, and seeing it in her impressed me greatly."

"She made you feel that she could do anything?" Roahn was easily able to picture Tali's warm gaze of her eyes through her violet mask, her arms reaching out to grasp Roahn through her memories. If she concentrated hard enough, she even started to feel warm through her suit, despite the cold.

"Pretty much," Shepard haltingly nodded. "Even when I first met her, Tali had such a keen knowledge of engineering that it seemed like she had forgotten more about the physics of FTL travel than I could ever know. She was just this well of knowledge, always eager to talk about the newest thing that she learned, but never in a condescending manner, oh no. Tali was so polite. She could have given the heads of state a run for their money in the etiquette department. But beyond all that…" Shepard took a moment to suck in a deep breath, "…she was simply a good friend. She was always by my side during the worst moments. The moments where I needed her the most. Tali was someone that I enjoyed being around—she put her complete and unwavering trust in me, and when she was gone, I—"

Shepard had to stop himself as a sudden bulge in his throat throbbed uncomfortably. He gave a tiny shudder and clasped a hand to his stomach, feeling nausea pool there. Cold sweat clung to his skin and his vision wobbled almost as if he was dehydrated. Tiny movements of his body became agonizing, like crushed glass was embedded under his skin, slicing at him from the inside out.

" _Dad?_ " he heard Roahn speak, but her voice echoed from far away, as if she was in a tunnel.

 _Tali_.

 _The same stars that filled the sky above Shepard's head on Alchera were not so dissimilar from the stars above them on Rannoch. But instead of a cold blue reminiscent of a deep lake, the sky was colored a royal purple with warm shades of firelight orange—the lingering presence of a sunset in the distance as the star floated towards the horizon._

 _Their home was here… but his body was back on Alchera. That was when Shepard knew he was hallucinating again._

 _But like all the rest of his trips, he fell into this one with open arms, accepting the flow of stimuli as easy as tumbling into a body of water. He just let it wash over him in an awesome wave, seeking to drown._

 _The murkiness of his vision bubbled and boiled before condensing in a black fog. Clouds suddenly dispersed in an instantaneous shockwave, the sun and stars finally painting the world he had intended to lay roots upon. Shadows fell into place amongst the set, one of them in particular meandering close to where he stood right now._

 _To his relief, the shadow seemed to simply turn in place only for color to whisk itself out of the maelstrom, revealing the elegant form of Tali, replete with life and looking utterly resplendent._

" _You look distracted," Tali spoke, her voice having an eerie but crystal clear effect upon his ears._

 _Basking in the sight of his beloved, Shepard gave a broad smile._

 _His wife offered an arm for him to intertwine himself with, her eyes projecting a sense of powerful wonder. Shepard felt small in her presence and his heart gave a noticeable lurch. A painful ache._

 _Yet he barely hesitated in taking the arm, the desert of Alchera already a fading memory in his mind, Roahn slipping away in his head, bit by bit._

" _Sorry," he dipped his head. "I kind of drifted off, there."_

" _You've been doing that a lot lately, you know."_

" _Have I? I haven't been paying much attention."_

 _Tali lightly chuckled as she wiped something off of Shepard's cheek with her thumb. "My, my. What could possibly be distracting you at a time like this, John?"_

" _Haven't a clue," Shepard smiled. "Perhaps the answer is standing right next to me. What else would I need to think about at a time like this, anyway?"_

 _Tali explosively sighed, but it was definitely through a grin. Shepard could easily tell Tali's expressions simply from the pitch of the noises she made. With that visor obscuring her face, he had learned relatively quickly on how to decipher Tali's moods and intentions through the subtle sounds and movements she made. Her own personal language… and only Shepard could read it._

" _You expect flattery to get you everywhere with me?" she lightly chided._

" _With you?" Shepard raised an eyebrow as the two of them fell into a slow step, their arms still linked together. "Absolutely."_

 _Tali rolled her eyes, but said nothing more, an admission that she had no response to Shepard's confidence. While his adoration approached levels of cheesiness quite often every day, the man was so endearing to her with his honesty and absolute sincerity that she had no other reaction but to have her heart melt at his words._

 _That damned human. He always knew what to say. The right words always came out of that mouth of his._

 _To Shepard, his field of view was expanding rapidly by the moment. The myopic fog no longer clung around him and his wife so closely, but had finally faded to be almost imperceptible to his eyes. A sprawling construct shoved midway onto the side of a towering mountain, the light from Rannoch's capitol glinting several miles away. The walkway that the two of them were upon curved around the side of a canyon while a shallow river slammed against rocks at the bottom, spitting up white foam. The angular towers and antenna of the facility grasped towards the multihued sky, long and limber fingers that sprawled upwards and appeared to pluck the stars from their heavenly perch._

 _This place, a multi-story metallic fortress, had been a relic of the Morning War, initially built as a military base, repurposed by the geth as a server hub, and was now used as a trading marketplace. Quarian merchants stood near their stalls and shouted at passerby to try their wares. Food, clothing, weapons, ship components; this place was Rannoch's flea market. The scale of the expansive rialto was so vast, stuffed head to toe with so many portable storefronts that it proved to be an overwhelming experience for both Shepard and Tali. Spending a minute inside had their heads spinning from the bustle of the place, the chattering noise of the proprietors, and the vivid display of every color upon the spectrum whirring into their faces._

 _The two of them came here on occasion, knowing that the marketplace was the perfect setting to experience the growth of the new Rannoch. But they still needed to come outside every once in a while to get some air and wind down from the hectic bustle inside the building._

" _Did you enjoy the meal?" Tali asked as they meandered nearer to the railing so that they could watch the rapids below. "I know they didn't have much for you to eat, with most food here being dextro and all."_

 _The marketplace had its own version of a food court, made up of several savvy quarians serving food out of their rented skycars. The merchants here, now that a limited infrastructure was starting to take hold on Rannoch, were now able to pick the produce they had grown on the farms, as fresh as they could ever be, instead of having to utilize freeze-dried crops for their meals. The natural food could be then made into a paste so flavorful that, when Tali had first tried one, had nearly brought her to tears. There was something to be said from the usage of fresh ingredients, most certainly. On the other hand, Shepard was incapable of digesting any of the local food, due to the fact that he could only eat items of levo chirality. Seeing as Rannoch evolved with an emphasis on purely dextro chiralities, Shepard was stuck with having to buy food garnered off-world. He didn't complain much about this, as many of the vendors routinely made trips to the Citadel, often coming back with foods that Shepard could eat and that was actually tasty, so he was satisfied on that front._

" _Trust me, I was quite all right with my food," Shepard said, meaning every word. "To tell you the truth, the food that you can get here is several times more edible than the usual rations that were given out to us in the Alliance. Compared to that, this was a banquet."_

 _Shepard then noticed that Tali was trying to surreptitiously fidget with her omni-tool, as evidenced by the telltale glow that wrapped around her arm—a futile attempt to hide her actions._

 _He let her fiddle around with her tool for a bit in amusement before making his presence known with a cough, causing her to jump._

" _Our daughter's fine, Tali," he said, having spotted the nanny-cam application on her screen. "You don't need to check up on her every five minutes."_

 _Sheepishly, Tali closed her tool as her hands twisted themselves into worried knots. "I… I know," she mumbled. "I can't help myself sometimes." She gave a little stumble, but caught herself so quickly that Shepard thought nothing of it._

" _Raan's looking after Roahn back at the house. If there was a problem, she would've let us know by now, don't you think?"_

 _Shala'Raan, admiral of the Patrol Fleet, was an old friend of Tali's family and godmother to their child. Despite her status, Raan's duties rarely took her up into space these days and she could adequately handle one young child, rambunctious though she might be, while simultaneously performing her role back at the house._

" _Of… of course, John," Tali sighed after a long beat, her hand coming up to her chest as her breathing began to slowly escalate. "It's just…" she then held up both hands, her fingers curling upward, pantomiming holding an object, "…it's been such a long time since we did anything like this. You and I. Without our baby, I mean. With her not around… it's like I'm feeling this strange tugging sensation, like there's a magnetic pull between us ensuring that we would not be apart for very long. Is that normal? Or is that something that sounds crazy to you?"_

" _Welcome to the world of parenthood, Tali," Shepard chuckled as he drew Tali's body closer to him, their arms still entangled, as they walked hip-to-hip outside upon the exposed deck as a breeze from the canyon caught up to them, threatening to bowl them over. "It's only natural for a parent to miss their child when they're not around. You're not alone with that feeling, trust me."_

" _It hasn't even been three hours and already I want to see her again. Keelah, I can't stop thinking about Roahn. And when she comes of age, when she is due to go out on her own…"_

 _Shepard gave his wife a playful little nudge. "Roahn's only five. We've still got plenty of time to prepare for that eventuality. You don't need to worry about that just yet."_

" _You do know that day is going to spring up on us without warning? I mean, if I can't bear to be apart from her now, I don't know what I'll be like when she decides to leave the house. I wonder… did my father ever feel anything like this when I left? Was this attachment always present in him?"_

 _Shepard bit his lip in consideration before he looked to the side, blinking as the waning sun glinted off of the rapids far below, the rushing of water offering a soothing noise to offset the silence of a Rannochian day._

" _I don't know what your father felt like when you left," Shepard admitted after a bit, "but I do know is that you've already proven yourself to be a better and more devoted parent than he ever was. After all, you've made a deliberate point to be with your daughter throughout her whole life so far, even rescinding your position as admiral so that you could specifically spend as much time as you wanted with your family. That has to count for something, doesn't it?"_

 _Tali immediately whipped her head around and Shepard could see, both in the reflection on her helmet and the look in her eyes, that he was the embodiment of all the intangible joy she had ever felt in her life. It made him feel that he was wanted. Infectiously, his grin began to spread._

" _You're such a good man," he heard his wife whisper. "Have I ever told you that before?"_

" _Many times," he responded. "But it never gets old to me."_

 _Tali wobbled against him, which made Shepard think that she was overwhelmed in the moment._

" _I feel exhausted," Tali sighed as she slumped against her husband. "Like being away from Roahn is sapping my energy."_

" _Tired? We can start heading back, then. Raan would probably be relieved to find us home early. Cut her babysitting hours short if Roahn's giving her any trouble." He laughed at the thought._

 _But Tali shook her head, her limbs beginning to tremble. "N-N-No… John. Something's different. I… I feel…."_

 _To Shepard, it appeared that Tali was trying to lift her arm up, but that she was only able to raise it to chest height. She stumbled again on the metal grating, lurching forward unexpectedly as her eyes widened. One of her hands then sought her stomach, clasping a hand over it as she started to bend over, like a fire had blossomed in her belly. Her breathing became a loud rasp through her vocabulator and Shepard could feel her start to convulse in his arms._

" _J-John…" he heard her mumble._

 _Then her legs gave out._

" _Tali?" Shepard uttered, horrified, as he caught the body of his wife, limp and incoherent. "Tali!"_

 _But Tali could only manage a string of garbled words. The two of them slid down to earth as Tali became deadweight in Shepard's arms, her eyes no longer able to focus on his face._

 _A feeble hand tried to raise itself up, a gloved hand draped in a soft, purple fabric, but Tali's muscles could not muster the strength, and her arm flopped all the way down._

" _Hey!" Shepard screamed to the passerby that had stopped to look at the sight of the human holding the collapsed Tali. "Help! We need help right now!"_

 _Tali did not remember anything after that._

 _When she eventually came to, it was to the sight of a blistering-white room and the sensation of reclining on a plushy cloud. As her vision improved, Tali realized that she had awoken in a hospital bed with a thin sheet covering her still-suited body. Everything was in place, even her helmet. The readout in her HUD was monitoring no contaminant alerts—her system was still clean. She tried to move herself but she felt a little pull of resistance on her left side. Turning her head, Tali saw that various tubes that pumped fluids through the access miters in her shoulder were connected to her suit, and therefore her body, keeping her hydrated while simultaneously monitoring her vitals._

 _I collapsed, is all, Tali thought innocently. I was just tired. Fatigued. Keelah, I hope I didn't worry John too much._

 _As the next few minutes passed, Tali was allowed to adjust to her surroundings at her own pace. By the look of the room and of the view outside, she guessed that she was lying in a wing of the hospital in the capitol city. She must have been flown over here from the marketplace. The room itself was sparsely furnished, with only a fold-out chair as the lone furniture item in sight, besides her bed._

 _Clutching at her belly, Tali looked up at the ceiling, recalling the stab of pain that she had felt seemingly moments ago. It had felt like a knife had split her open back then, stealing her energy and claiming her breath. Right now, there was no pain, but the phantom of that agony still lingered in the back of her mind._

 _Wincing, she lifted her palm away from her stomach as if she had been burned._

 _She wondered where her husband was._

 _Just then, as if drawn by her soundless request, the door opened and Shepard walked in, a worried look on her face. Tali ignored his expression and instead gave a grateful smile, her eyes signaling her relief._

" _Hi, John," Tali greeted, smiling through the ghost of her pain._

 _Shepard paused while entering the room, his footsteps stilted and lurching as he shuffled at an uneven pace. "Hello, Tali. They… they told me to wait a few minutes when they saw that you had awoken. I hope I didn't worry you too much."_

" _Worry? Me?" Tali asked earnestly, lifting herself upward in surprise. There was some discomfort as Tali unintentionally yanked at the tubes that were connected to her shoulder and she gave a slight wince, but she managed to adjust herself into a position that was more comfortable. "John, if anyone should apologize, it's me."_

" _Tali…" Shepard sighed._

" _I'm so sorry, John," Tali spoke before Shepard could be given the chance. "I don't know what happened to me. I just… fell. But… I'm feeling much better. Really, I am."_

 _The smile that Shepard made was heartfelt, but Tali immediately spotted that the man was tormented by something. Ice water ran into her veins and the sinking feeling returned as her husband silently took the foldable chair and placed it next to her bed so that he could be near his wife._

" _I'm… I'm glad you're feeling better," Shepard's lying smile continued to reign upon his face. "That's… I… it's good that you're feeling well now."_

 _Tali blinked, caught off guard by this ill-disguised insincerity. "What?" she could only ask._

 _Shepard nearly brought his head all the way down to the raised mattress in his own agony, acting like he would have given all the money in the galaxy to not be the herald for the news he was about to present. His hands helplessly grasped at the sheets, clenching them in his powerful fists. Tali reached out and smoothed her three-fingered hands across his, feeing his gnarled muscles knot in their strain._

" _Tali…" Shepard croaked, his voice thick. "I don't know how to tell you—"_

" _So tell me," she interrupted but her eyes quickly widened to the size of saucers and her hands dug into Shepard's arm so tightly that it made him wince in pain. "Wait, my baby! John, where's Ro—?"_

" _She's fine," Shepard closed his eyes and patted the side of Tali's helmet reassuringly, his fingers nearing the sensitive areas of her neck as he neared his touch lovingly. "Sleeping in the other room. Raan's still watching over her."_

" _Wait, sleeping? I don't under-… how long have I been asleep?"_

 _Biting his lip, Shepard took a while to answer. "Fourteen hours."_

 _Off in the corner of some far-away land, a portion of Tali's fantasy disintegrated in moments._

" _Tali," Shepard continued when his wife failed to respond, "there's something else I need to tell you. While you were unconscious, the doctors ran some tests. They wanted to know what made you so fatigued. They thought that you were either dehydrated or lacking some nutrient or electrolytes. But they… they found…"_

 _Shepard's lip trembled and he hung his head in shame so that Tali would not have to see his tears. He would have preferred to sink down to the size of an ant and crawl away, unseen._

 _But Tali's hand found his chin and gently raised his head upward. Breathing pitifully, Shepard took one look at Tali's limpid eyes, finding a silent plea for answers locked within her gaze. The quarian held the human in her palm, her very touch seemingly wiping away all pain, all fear. Shepard's consciousness opened up in moments and he was able to take a deep breath, yet tears still stained his face._

" _Tell me," Tali whispered, her tongue lightly enunciating her words as her voice slightly shook. That was her only beg for answers. Her loving yet damning plea._

 _Shepard had never been able to refuse his wife anything._

 _Today was no exception._

 _As the minutes slipped by while the solutions began to unfold, the two grew closer and closer in proximity within the room until finally, they could no longer bear it anymore and they met in a frantic and desperate hug. The two remained like this for a long time, holding onto each other, saying words that would be heard by no one else. The hug tightened as they fell deeper into their anxious grief. There was no more time for tears for either of them—the future had no need for that._

 _From here on out, things would be changed forevermore._

" _Dad?"_ he heard Roahn say once more, yanking him from his reverie with her fearsome insistence.

Shepard shuddered in place as his mind continued to withdraw from the memory, sniffling a bit and noticing that the interior of his helmet was starting to mist up. The chill from Alchera now crept into his suit and froze his bones, the memory of Rannoch's warm sunlight fading the colder he got.

Damn it. This was getting old fast.

"I… uh…" Shepard muttered as he sniffed again, wishing that he had the ability to wipe his nose without this stupid helmet getting in the way. "Sorry, Roahn. I lost my train of thought, there."

The girl did not look convinced as she sat cross-legged next to her father, but did not continue to press the matter further, which worried Shepard. Did she not believe his feeble excuses, or did she have the clairvoyance, even at her age, to sense that he was holding something back from her and was too afraid to point it out?

Wait, why did he think that? Why would Roahn be afraid? Of _him?_

Trying to make up for the sudden coldness he had exhibited in his voice, he took Roahn's slender hand in his bulky glove, causing her to appraise him earnestly once again.

"Your mother… was a wonderful woman, Roahn," Shepard resumed speaking to his daughter, but his voice was now considerably rawer than before. Sadness and anger had been raking him open, causing his fear to bleed out, a wound he was hiding from the girl. "She was the kind of person that I always wanted to be. Someone that I easily saw that I could spend the rest of my life with. And when she was finally gone, I…" Shepard took a wavering breath, "…I knew that there would be no one that could replace her in my life. No one."

Soberly, Roahn took all this in with a knowing nod, easily able to accept the truth in Shepard's words. But she could still see the remnants of the past assault him viciously. Even now, Roahn could see the war that raged within Shepard's eyes, the turmoil that sparred in blistering combat as he wrestled with his demons.

"How did mom die?" Roahn suddenly blurted, her hand wriggling out of Shepard's loose grip.

Shepard did a double-take, a frown immediately weighing down his mouth.

"You never…" Roahn stammered as she saw the dark look overtake her father's face. "You… you never told me _how_."

"I already did," Shepard said firmly, a hard edge steeling his voice, his peaceful tone vanishing in an instant. "She got sick. I told you that before."

"I… I know," Roahn nodded quickly, "but… what did she get sick _from?_ "

Her persistence was bound to wear off on Shepard eventually and now was one of those moments where she had pressed on the wrong nerve. Shepard shot to his feet in a flash, impressive given the fact that his spacesuit severely hampered his movements, and gave a hard stomp on the ground, snow flaking off his body as he scowled.

"I _told_ you," he repeated thickly, with a growl, "she got _sick_."

And with that, Shepard turned on his heel and tramped back towards the ship they had arrived in, leaving clear indentions in the snow from his boots.

Suddenly left alone, Roahn sat on the ground and watched her father leave, finding that a newfound pain in her heart was splintering her open right now as well. The darkness that Shepard failed to notice that he was exuding was infecting her simultaneously. Torn from the abruptness of how quickly her father's mood had changed, she clutched her chest as she let out a quiet sob.

Stung from the lack of closure, Roahn surprised herself with the ferocity of her own emotions as the urge to openly weep assaulted her senses.

But no tears fell. She would not let them fall.

* * *

 **A/N: Ah, ambiguity. The bane of the reader. Conversely, it gives me quite a lot of fun doing this to you all. Maybe I'm just evil like that, heh. Whoever said that I had to be benevolent in my writing, anyway?**

 **Playlist:**

 **The Apartment: "Jellyfish" by Thomas Newman from the film _Skyfall_**

 **Alchera (Family Theme IV): "Suzy Leaves James" from the film _Rush (Complete Score - Not on Original Soundtrack)_**

 **Tali Memory V: "A Fatal Tragedy" by James Horner from the film _Southpaw_**


	11. Chapter 11: Where the Wild Things Are

" _How would you define Chimera's work culture, Mr. Koenig? Or, in being a little more specific, how would you imagine the ideal work culture that Chimera should strive towards?"  
_ Sen. Oteino – Kenya

" _I should imagine emphasizing a culture that provides a welcoming atmosphere to its employees, and that the duties of its workers should be carefully balanced with aspects of their personal lives, with a management team that is honest and empathetic."_  
Erich Koenig, CEO – Chimera

" _That's all well and good, Mr. Koenig, but… somewhat surprising in hindsight, given your rather run-of-the-mill response."  
_ Sen. Oteino – Kenya

" _Surprising? How so?"  
_ Erich Koenig, CEO – Chimera

" _When comparing your statements to the anonymous reviews that Chimera employees have been posting on job sites, it seems that there is a catastrophic disconnect between management and regular employees—which is in direct contrast to your initial claim. Take, for example, the aggregate score Chimera has garnered on one such site. A C-minus. Specific emphasis from many of these employees point out that Chimera's work-life balance is, in their own words, atrocious. Also, it appears that the hierarchy of Chimera lends itself to enable a practice of 'kingdom-building' in management, which is a term used in organizations to refer to individuals attempting to obtain greater authority by utilizing underhanded methods. Kingdom-building is apparently used by some of the more powerful individuals in an organization to maximize their own job security, by hoarding credit over their teams and projects, which in turn causes the effectiveness of the team, and therefore the organization, to suffer. And this is a problem that is apparently rife within Chimera, so why is it that you seem to be completely ignorant of what's occurring within your own dominion?"  
_ Sen. Oteino – Kenya

" _Senator, though I may be CEO, the day-to-day duties of people several rungs below my level are usually never communicated up to someone in my position. This happens in many large companies and is not an unusual concept. Now, if some individuals happen to be misusing their power and authority in an effort to garner extra points in an unfair manner, I would expect someone to make a complaint to HR if that was the case. Chimera's structure is explicitly designed to punish those that try to game the system, for without it, everything would fall apart."  
_ Erich Koenig, CEO – Chimera

" _Pardon me, Mr. Koenig, but as the CEO, shouldn't the burden be placed on you to ensure that the system was built correctly in the first place? Or are you content to sit on something that's broken until it's so far gone that it's irreparable? Is there a limit to when you yourself are going to step in?"  
_ Sen. Oteino – Kenya

* * *

 _Omega – Dock 13_  
 _Sahrabarik System_

Shepard could only stare at the inside of the cabinet for a long while, his mood ranging from being fairly worried to a dark cloud of outright dread. Sighing, he folded his arms across his chest as he appraised the cabinet in the kitchen of his spacecraft, finding that the cramped walls of the ship's interior seemed to be closing in on him in a taunting gesture.

Normally, the inside of this particular cabinet would not be much of an issue nor a topic of interest, except for the fact that the cabinet itself was empty right now.

Empty, when it should have been filled to the brim with vials akin to the one that Shepard was holding in his hand. Vials that held the medication that he needed to function properly.

Entolimod. Otherwise known as CBLB502 in medical circles. A powerful medicine that specifically agitates immune-response receptors in the body, quelling any side-effects garnered after Shepard's years of traversing hazardous environments. The recommended dosage was one vial every three days, lest withdrawal symptoms would start to crop up which would include cramping, indigestion, and in some rare cases, even death. Entolimod was not a medicine that Shepard could ever be weaned off of—he had to take it for life, and since his stockpile was at a critical level, he was out of options at this point. He needed to refill his stores, and fast.

Shepard had been dreading this eventuality. When the Legionnaire had destroyed his home on Rannoch, he had destroyed his personal cache of entolimod along with it. Shepard had allocated a few handfuls of the medicine in different places, one of these places being his ship, but these were paltry proportions compared to the main lode he had built up back in his house. On the ship, he had only enough entolimod to last him a few weeks at best. A mere stopgap compared to the amount he had previously accumulated.

And now, he was out. Only one vial left. That gave him a seven-day window, at best, to find more before any debilitating side effects would overtake him. These side effects were also not all that considerate because if Shepard missed his dosage window by even a day, they would proceed to immediately crop up and cause him to be in excruciating pain, which was not something that Shepard was willing to subject himself to. Especially now. People were counting on him and that meant that he needed to be at his best.

But even his best now was a fleeting shadow of the man he had been, a reminder of the fact that he had seen better days once before. He had been unstoppable at one time. No longer.

Which is why Shepard had no choice but to bite the bullet and make a beeline for the closest place (at least in the relative proximity to Alchera), planet or station, that he figured would sell such a substance such as entolimod. FTL travel consumed a lot of hours while in transit, which had forced Shepard to pick his next destination quite conservatively—resulting in a conclusion that Shepard was not all that pleased to have made. All things considered, he really would not have wanted to even take another step on board this next place, his selected harbor, had his life not depended on it.

Because the closest port, and the haven Shepard had chosen, was Omega.

The de facto heart of the Terminus. A hive of villainous scum and home of some of the most notorious gangsters that the galaxy had ever known. If there ever was a hell, Omega would be a good place to garner a fitting impression of the inferno that potentially awaited.

Omega was a gigantic space station crudely planted into the middle of a weathered and metallic asteroid in the Sahrabarik system's main asteroid belt. The depths of Omega, deep within the asteroid itself, contained rich veins of element zero, a resource that had only been available to be mined when another asteroid had slammed itself into it thousands of years ago, cracking the previously impenetrable rock in half and exposing the eezo. Omega's element zero resources were so vast that the person in control of the entire operation would theoretically be one of the most powerful in the galaxy, in terms of estimated net worth. Like clockwork, when Omega's eezo stores had been discovered, and the promise of riches reached the ears of the private corporations, they had naturally raced over to secure a deposit of their own. However, since Omega itself was located in the Terminus Systems, outside the influence of the Citadel Council worlds, gangsters and other unsavory types quickly drove out the venture capitalists by force and took control of all mining operations. The gangs still ran Omega today, but their continuous squabbling over land in the form of minor skirmishes prevented any Omegan group from accumulating a solid presence outside of the Terminus, but that would make Omega only the more dangerous to outsiders.

As Omega grew in population over the centuries, so did its size. A metallic spindle, several kilometers in length, began building outward from the surface asteroid as mining picked up, looking like someone had driven a giant metal stake through the heart of the rock. Several gigantic mass effect field generators were also inserted in wide angles between the station and the asteroid, acting as a shield to protect Omega from wayward space debris, giving the entire station the look of a monumentally large jellyfish.

Despite its impressive size, Omega's expansion projects were notoriously crude and haphazard, as the quick and hasty construction was specifically done to increase the amount of volume available to the station without giving any regard to the safety of the station itself. Construction workers responsible for expanding Omega were said to have a mortality rate of 35% while working in the zero-g conditions for awful pay. Then again, where would the workers complain to about their poor working conditions? Neither human resources nor unions had any power in Omega, so potential job candidates simply had to suck it up and go with the flow. If they died, then they died. Simple as that. There were always willing bodies to replace another, even for the pathetic table scraps that was billeted as a salary.

Omega was an outlaw's paradise. It had no central government, no police force guarding it, or for that matter, any written rules for the inhabitants to abide by. Most people living on this station were either civilians looking to take on grungy work in exchange for the exorbitantly low cost of living, or mercenaries looking to cut their teeth in one of the station's many gangs, the most notorious of which was currently headed by Aria T'Loak, the "pirate queen" of Omega. Not exactly an enemy to Shepard as they had collaborated many times in the past for their own mutual benefit, but he would rather not involve himself with Aria if he could help it. The asari tended to be a bit too acerbic for his tastes. She had a habit of really getting under Shepard's skin because of her propensity to engage in trades that were morally reprehensible to Shepard's own complex. With Aria, violence and killing came to her casually while Shepard preferred to avoid it unless absolutely necessary.

Not managing to get entangled with Aria would be a tricky prospect. If there was such thing as an authority on Omega, Aria was it. As the asari had so tenderly pointed out years ago, the only rule of Omega was " _do not fuck with Aria_."

A succinct rule, no doubt, yet it also hinted at the fact that Aria had her fingers in all the pies. Operating under the radar would be difficult, but not impossible. Fortunately, Shepard's weathered appearance and his discreet method of transportation would dissuade any prying eyes from peering too closely at the veneer he had established for himself. The only reason why Shepard had never been bombarded by would-be fans, even on Rannoch, was that he looked a far cry from his poster-boy days of old. Growing his hair and beard out, combined with the shocking color of gray in them, helped sell his chameleonic appearance.

Shepard ran through the laundry list of items he needed to accomplish while he hurriedly shouldered on a jacket. He only needed to procure the medicine he sought while, at the same time, trying to diminish his presence upon Omega as much as possible. Fortunately, medicine was the only item on his list—the ship still had enough provisions on board to last a month, and fuel could be purchased here without him needing to take a single step off-board.

Venturing off the ship was where things would get a little dicey.

To top it off, he had his daughter to contend with. Speaking of which…

"I want to come with you!" Roahn piped up as she leaned her head from her room, her _sehni_ slightly askew as a result of sleeping on her side and only now just coming to.

Shepard looked up from zipping his jacket and gave his daughter a stern look. Maybe if Roahn had made the request a second time, he would have guffawed about the ludicrousness of her timing. "Absolutely out of the question," he shook his head emphatically and immediately. "There is _no way_ that you're setting foot on Omega."

Roahn glared at Shepard, the glow of her eyes narrowing into slits, as her hands reached up to adjust the _sehni_ atop her head. "When you said that you would take me to the places that meant something to you—"

"—Omega was not one of them," Shepard interrupted for the sake of clarification. "We're not here by choice, I assure you. This is not somewhere that I'd like to be, nor is it any place for you especially."

Roahn was not privy to the exact reasoning why Shepard needed to stop here in the first place, but that was not going to be something that Shepard wanted to admit to her right now. On the other hand, his tight-lipped-ness was resulting in his daughter putting on a very stubborn front. She never did like to be told no without adequate reasoning.

"Still," Roahn pouted, "I'd like to see it."

"See what? A dying station filled to the brim with cutthroats and lowlifes? Surrounding yourself with killers, prostitutes, and drug dealers? There is no way, I repeat, no way in _hell_ that I am going to let you off this ship onto this station."

"Why? Do you not think that I'm ready for it?"

Shepard gave a long look to the ceiling, trying to conjure up Tali's infinite calmness to properly deal with his daughter so that he would not make a complete hash out of things. The last thing that he needed right now was to lose himself to frustration. A long breath helped and he felt his temper summarily cool.

He nodded, breath echoing faintly within the ship. "In a sense, _yes_. I don't think you're ready. _But_ ," he spoke before Roahn could protest some more, which from looking at her, she was clearly about to do, "that's not really what you should concern yourself with. Omega is not a nice place. It is unlike anywhere you've ever been before. It isn't sanitized like the Citadel. A child like you would only be in great danger if you were to venture out of this ship. Omega's not a place for good memories. For millions of people, this is rock bottom. As low as it gets. From the handful of times that I've been here, _I've_ never had a good memory of this place. It's just too much, too intense, for you to handle. That's not something that someone as young as you should live with."

"Yet children live on Omega just as well," Roahn pointed out, but she was merely reaching at this point.

"At a lower quality of life. And I also doubt that they would live to reach their thirties."

"But—"

"No more," Shepard gave a firm wave of his hand, cutting Roahn off. "My mind on this was made up hours ago, before we even entered the system. I will be leaving for a little bit and you are to stay here until I get back. _No exceptions_. Am I understood?"

To Roahn, it was like facing an enormous brick wall. No way to scale it or go around it. It was clear that Shepard was quite serious with his intentions, showing no signs of budging. A bit disappointed, Roahn gave a tiny sigh and a miniscule bob of her head, which caused Shepard some relief at least.

"I won't be long," were his parting words to his daughter as he turned on his heel in a single maneuver, a holdout from his days as a marine, and walked out of the door to the airlock, pausing for a few seconds to let the room decompress so that he could exit.

Roahn just stared at her father as the craft's door closed between them.

Once outside, Shepard also gave the airlock door a long appraisal, listening for the telltale whirr of the vacuum seal of the exit compress, giving his craft an encased atmosphere. He then noted the time on his chronometer and mentally allotted himself one hour to complete his task. One hour. He figured that was enough time to grab what he needed.

He did not think that he was being all that restrictive with his daughter. What Roahn did not have were the years of personal experience that Shepard had accumulated from sojourning to Omega every once in a while. Each time he had set foot on this station in the past, he always ended up drawing his weapon. The threat of violence here was simply too pervasive to risk Shepard bringing his daughter into the heart of Omega. He felt that he would be a pretty irresponsible parent if he had given in, at any rate.

Why couldn't he make Roahn see his point of view?

Shepard, vulnerable to his morose thoughts, then proceeded to walk down the walkway of the docks, taking stock of the multitude of ships parked on the same level before he headed into a nearby hallway that was encased by reinforced transparisteel plates. A couple mercenary guards, both batarians, stood watch at the dock exits, looking altogether disinterested, but snapped to a more stable level of alertness when they saw Shepard headed their way.

One of the guards raised a hand in a stopping motion and Shepard halted just mere feet away. However, Shepard did not speak first, waiting to see what the mercenaries had to say before any action was to be taken.

"Identification," one of the guards said brusquely. A helmet covered his face, the visor darkened to cover all six of the man's eyes and obscure his expression.

What the hell? This was new. When did Omega start caring about security? Most times, anyone could go wherever they pleased on this station. To an extent, at least.

Shepard just narrowed his eyes. "Why?" he asked, keeping his tone flat.

"Orders from Aria. You don't show ID, you don't enter Omega."

"Uh-huh. And when exactly did Aria tell you to start shaking down people who wanted to enter Omega? Last I heard, this was an open port."

"Recent development. Aria's been rather cautious lately. Said to close everything off to people who couldn't show ID or pay the entrance fee."

Okay. Shepard saw where this was going. Classic blunt obstacle move. He nearly rolled his eyes in front of the two mercs for how brazen of a strategy this was. Extorting money from visitors was a new low, even for Omega's gangs. In fact, there was something about these particular gangsters that felt off to Shepard and he tightened his body in preparation.

"Why the hell are you eying our uniforms?" the other guard bluntly asked, the gauntleted hands gripping his rifle starting to clench harder on the stock.

"Just curious," Shepard responded airily, face still grim. "You said that you worked for Aria, right?"

"Do you know of another Aria?" the guard gurgled a sickly laugh.

"No, it's just… it's weird. Your insignia. It doesn't match Aria's at all." Shepard then lifted his head, his beard hiding a vague smile. "She didn't happen to go through a brand redesign since I was away?"

The guards, caught in the act, looked at each other for reinforcement, clearly dumbfounded that someone had come along with the gall to question their little operation. Then they started to raise their weapons, now determined to use force to squeeze out every little bit of money from Shepard's pocket. But the guards were untrained novices compared to Shepard, clearly telegraphing their every intent, and Shepard utilized that to his advantage.

At the barest twitch of a muscle from the closest guard, Shepard was already several steps ahead. From the holster concealed by his jacket, Shepard whipped out the pistol, the one he had taken back from Roahn on Rannoch, and swung it, grip-first, into the head of the closest batarian. The guard's helmet was designed to protect against physical attacks but at the speed and strength that Shepard had hurled his arm, the glass visor might as well have been paper in the path of the onrushing blow.

The grip met the visor and the glass shattered upon impact, spraying forth a silvery cloud of shards and dust. Then there was a meaty _thump_ as the momentum of the grip smashed into the batarian's nose, breaking it, and sending a gush of blood to the ground.

The batarian squealed and dropped his rifle, holding his hands against his nose to stem the flood of blood. All violent tendencies vanished in an instant from the alien. Very quickly, the chin of the guard's helmet was stained red as well as his chestpiece, all six of his eyes wide in horror and in pain as he knelt down to the ground while blood gurgled through his clenched fingers.

By this point, Shepard had flipped the pistol in his grip so that his finger was firmly on the trigger, the sights aimed right at the head of the man's cohort. The second guard had not even managed to get his weapon up either, for Shepard had been so fast. The other batarian froze, clearly hesitant, while Shepard maintained the same blank look as he leaned in with his gun.

"Don't even try it," Shepard said, his voice now taking on a commanding tone. "Weapon. At your feet. Now."

Meekly, the batarian immediately complied. Smart of him, Shepard figured. Mercs with a sense of self-preservation. A nice change of pace from the regular berserkers. Shepard kicked the offending rifle away, well out of reach.

"I'd suggest you get out of here before Aria finds out what you've been up to," Shepard said, finding it ironic that he was speaking on the pirate leader's behalf, despite his misgivings. "You'd probably live longer that way."

To their credit, the batarians took Shepard at his word, with the uninjured guard having to help carry his staggering companion away, leaving a trail of blood spatters behind.

Now alone in the hallway, Shepard sagged against the wall in relief as he slotted the pistol back into his holster. Skin clammy, he wiped his forehead, his palm coming away shiny with his sweat.

He had not yet reached Omega's marketplace and had already pulled out his weapon. Damn it, this was not going to be an easy slog.

His instincts were still there when he needed him most, he mused. All those years of combat experience drilled into him over and over again. The reflexes. The quick thinking. His previous life had never left him. Even after all this time, he could rise to the occasion in order to defend himself and his family. He could still rely on his muscles never being a millimeter out of place, each movement a carefully choreographed routine that he followed to perfection. A well-oiled machine, still fulfilling its purpose.

Shepard clenched a fist regretfully. Had there been a way to resolve this encounter without resorting to violence? Sure, he could have paid the fee, but would the hit to his pride have been worth it just to avert conflict? The back of his teeth began to ache. Worrying about this was taking his toll on him, so he vowed to purge it from his thoughts as quickly as possible. For his sake, and for the sake of others, he needed his head to be clear.

Still, Shepard did not like the fact that he was so quick to violence at the drop of a hat. He wondered if this was the true person living within his body, the persona of the Commander, that acted as his true definition of his very self. _That_ Shepard could wave a gun and destroy his enemies with a mere thought. He had committed genocides and various atrocities under the guise of his former moniker. People were nothing in that barbarian's wake. Rivers would run red with blood and mountains would be made out of corpses before his will would give out. The Reapers had fallen victim to his true strength, the might of the Commander.

But the Commander did not exist anymore. His true heart, his very soul, had been coaxed out by the only person he had fallen in love with. His warrior mentality had been assuaged in light of a grand future with his beloved, his _Tali_. Thanks to her, he became something more, something greater and pure. He was a father now. He had a daughter, someone whom he was responsible for. He had to be _better_ than that.

How could he justify his instinct for violence when his love was needed more?

Once he had calmed down from the ordeal, Shepard mustered up his courage, putting his blank face on once more, and finally stepped through the partition that separated the docks from the main station, savoring a deep breath of stale air. He was going to need all of his mental fortitudes working properly from here on out.

As ugly as Omega's reputation was, Shepard had to admit that there was no other place like it. The setting of Omega was entirely industrial, with large tangles of piping and wires exposed everywhere, bolted onto the sides of buildings and hanging across alleys in thick tangles reminiscent of vines. The entire aesthetic of the station was comprised of a dirty-bronze metal, lodged into the very rock of the asteroid. Hell, if Shepard even craned his head upward, he could see the ceiling several kilometers up, of the metallic space-ward stone that housed this place. That is, if his vision could pierce the copper cloud of dust and smog that clung upwards in a sickly mist, keeping his view heavily obscured. A multitudinous crowd of people aimlessly wandered upon the cramped walkways and plazas, many of them looking drained from being overworked or from the fact that they were on some sort of questionable substance. As this was Omega, the latter was not all that of an uncommon occurrence here.

Omega was segmented into thousands of vertical metallic pillars, dozens of miles long and none of them alike, that very specifically connected the station to the actual asteroid, leaving space in between for skycars and other airborne ships to traverse. These pillars were also divided into specific districts that various gangs held dubious claims to.

The interior of the station was very dim, the only lighting coming from artificial bulbs out of windows, smudged outdoor lamps, or from the undulating neon images of holographic signs adorning the various storefronts. But the bulk of the illumination came from the forges deep in the heart of Omega. They burned the color of a healthy star, millions of degrees in heat, as they worked to smelt the raw element zero that was continually pulled from the asteroid every waking hour. The light spread like a wildfire, calmly warping its way through the hundreds of levels on the station in ambient waves. The result of which was a constant amber tint that permeated every corner of the station, oozing and searing itself into Omega's existence. The permanent reddish tinge that swirled around in a grandiose soup gave Shepard the impression that the station was constantly ablaze, which _was_ technically correct in a sense.

A continual haze enveloped the entire interior of the station. It darkened the already gloomy station, leaving the spotlights of the metallic pillars as the lone beacons that speared through the ever-present night. This smog was not something that could be dispelled so easily. The haze was in every single square inch of air that people breathed. It was smoke, ozone, and deadly asteroid dust all in one toxic mix. People who lived on Omega long-term frequently developed breathing problems, and the ones who managed to fare without gaining a chronic cough only did so by frequently dosing their lungs with powerful medication.

Even though he had only been on Omega for a few minutes, Shepard's lungs were already feeling the strain. His breathing was starting to get a little ragged, like his chest was having to push against a weight holding him down. Shepard tugged at his collar, gritting his teeth, now more motivated than ever to find what he wanted and to get the hell out of here.

Fortunately, Shepard knew where to go to get his medication, his memory serving him well. From what he could recall, he only needed to walk for a few minutes to the relative right of the docks in order to reach the Carrd district. That area was controlled by the elcor and was seen as one of the safer places on Omega due to the fact that it was a district in which many merchants had set up shop there. If Shepard couldn't find his entolimod there, then he knew that there would be no other place on Omega that he could procure it.

Entering the district, Shepard ignored the majority of the merchants that were vying for his attention and instead headed over to the largest stall in the marketplace, which was controlled by a particular shopkeeper known as Harrot. Harrot, an elcor, had a low profile within the entire district, but he was actually the head of the whole commerce forum within the Carrd district. A small-time gangster, he was a close ally of Aria who let him operate within her turf in exchange for a percentage of all profits garnered. As such, Harrot was rumored to be a bit of a hardass with regards to how he ran his shop, but Shepard knew, from his brief interaction with the man, that Harrot could be rather amenable and helpful given the right circumstances.

Hopefully he would catch the elcor in a reasonable mood today.

Lo and behold. Said elcor was in the same place that Shepard had last seen him: behind the counter of his stall, smoking a cigar.

The elcor's dark eyes immediately latched onto Shepard as he approached the counter and Harrot angled himself with his long front arms so that he was facing the human directly. Not an easy task, as the elcor had to lumber around a bit before he felt that he was properly oriented.

"Genuinely: Welcome, human," Harrot greeted, monotone. "If you are seeking something that is not on my list of wares, I would be happy to help."

The elcor were an odd race. They stood on all fours and had the build of a gorilla, but without any discernable neck. They were hairless, colored a mottled gray. Their hide was as thick and tough as an elephant's and their mouth consisted of a series of flaps on their face that reminded Shepard of gills.

What was most distinctive about the elcor as a whole, other than their appearance, was the way they talked. When elcor talked to other elcor, they had other means of communication to rely on besides vocal tones, as they punctuated their words with scents, microscopically small body movements, and infrasound frequencies. However, most species were not attuned to pick up on any of an elcor's other methods of communication thus, if an elcor were to talk to another alien race utilizing a proper conversational format, their overall intent would be untranslatable and misunderstood. This was why elcor tended to punctuate their sentences with their intended emotional state, as they did not have the ability alter the pitch at which they spoke otherwise. As a result, speaking to an elcor was disconcerting at first, but one quickly got used to it after a time.

Harrot was no exception to this rule. If Shepard were to give a mere glance at the alien, he would swear that the elcor would look relatively placid. Even if the elcor had been angered beyond all reason, it would still appear to Shepard that Harrot would seem unearthly calm.

Aside from that, as Shepard took stock of the elcor's appearance, he wondered why Harrot would go to the trouble of smoking a cigar. Obviously, the complete picture here was quite weird. Elcor lungs were much larger than human lungs. Was there enough nicotine in a cigar to give an elcor a decent fix? And how could an elcor light a cigar with those unwieldy hands of theirs? Shepard could never figure that little tic out and he reasoned that it would be a mystery that would never be solved.

Despite having talked with Harrot in the past, the elcor did not seem to recognize Shepard past his thick beard. That was good. Shepard was hoping to capitalize upon that for as long as possible.

"I need a list of the medication you have in your stock," Shepard said, taking wayward glances to the side, keeping his head on a swivel.

"Cordially: Of course, human," Harrot said. "Proudly: As you can see, I have a wide variety of substances for you to use. Red sand, fentanyl, methotrexate, salvia, lysergic acid dy—"

"No, no," Shepard quickly halted the elcor. "I don't want any illegal drugs. I'm looking for more of your legal wares."

"Apologetically: Forgive me, human. I misunderstood what you wanted," Harrot said in his slow tone, his expression ever unchanging. "Cheerfully: I have an even larger list of medicine on call. Prescription and over-the-counter. Are you looking for a specific medication or a broad spectrum of similar medications?"

"Entolimod," Shepard took a little step towards the counter, well aware that his own voice had dropped in volume.

The elcor did not respond for a bit, looking lost. Shepard had to force himself not to either frown or bite his lip in concern. Something was amiss, here.

"Meekly: I am sorry, human, but I do not carry entolimod here."

Great. Just great. Of all the rotten luck that the one medication he needed was not here.

"You know of anywhere else in the market that sells it?" Shepard scratched at his beard, trying not to show his irritation, already fantasizing himself throwing a quiet fit back in his spaceship as he would no doubt have to think of another place to get the medicine he needed before the side effects of his condition took hold.

"Candidly: No one in the marketplace or any forum on Omega sells it. We're not allowed to."

Shepard was about to throw his hands up in despair, an uncharacteristic move but one that would be necessary to emphasize his overall frustration with how this day was turning out. But then he halted, playing back Harrot's words in his head.

"Who…" Shepard started, "… _who_ dictates that you're not allowed to sell entolimod?"

Shepard had the feeling that Harrot would be glaring at him in his own annoyance at his incessant questioning, if only the elcor had a humanoid face. Smoke from the cigar blew through the alien's flaps, obscuring Shepard in a thick cloud, only adding to the pollution that Shepard was breathing in.

"Bluntly: Aria T'Loak, of course. She controls the entire market for entolimod. All licensed dealing goes through her."

Shepard's fingers beat an erratic tempo upon the counter as his eyes lost focus. Wearily, he glanced back towards the entrance where he had just come from, recognizing the destination that his path would have to lead him towards. For if he wanted to leave here with his necessary items in tow, it looked like that he was going to have to deal with the notorious pirate queen herself for them.

He should have known that it was going to come to this. If Aria was really as involved with every aspect of Omega as she had once said to him, then it was only a matter of time before their paths would cross once more.

"Aria T'Loak," Shepard sighed to himself as he pushed his body up and away from the counter, mentally preparing himself for what was to come. "What a shocker."

* * *

Meanwhile, back inside the ship, Roahn was pacing back and forth, bored out of her mind while waiting for her father to return. She could not help herself. She was naturally restless, the network on her omni-tool was not functioning properly—meaning that she could not access the extranet to distract herself—and on top of all that, there was a brand new space station just outside the door begging to be explored!

Why _shouldn't_ she be antsy?

Until a week ago, Roahn had never been off Rannoch before. Nine years of staying on the same world tended to build up her impatience, her desire to explore more of the galaxy, to branch out from the little bubble that she had been placed in for her whole life so far. She could not just _read_ about what was out there, she needed to _see_ it!

When the need had presented itself to her and her father, the drive to finally escape her homeworld, Roahn's head had been reeling from the bevy of sights that had been presented to her as her hopes and dreams had been summarily fulfilled. The infinite black of space. The swirling dust clouds of nebulae. The searing glow of a mass relay. The firestorm whirling between a binary star. The tropics of Virmire. The snowy plains of Alchera. All so… different. Different than anything she had been exposed to before. She wanted more.

No, she _craved_ more. This was no fleeting shadow of a phase. This was a hunger that festered and grew within her, nudging her towards an irresistible restlessness. There was a whole new side of the galaxy just feet away from her, begging to be glimpsed.

But her father said that she was not ready. He still held the power to dictate her life as he saw fit.

How awfully unfair.

Speaking of which, how long had he been gone? Roahn tilted her wrist to check her chronometer.

 _Ten minutes?!_ Roahn nearly choked on her own spit. Only ten minutes had elapsed and she was already wandering around every square meter of the ship that she could cover. This was just a _disaster_.

"I can't take it anymore," Roahn groaned out loud, not caring how noisy she was. After all, who could hear her in here? "I've got to get out, just for a little bit."

A sly, mischievous smile spread across Roahn's face as her heart rate began to increase, tense with anticipation. All alone in the ship, she suddenly felt even tinier, as she instinctively quieted her breathing, just in case her father was lurking outside of the door of the ship to see if she would disobey his orders.

He probably would not do something like that… but that did not mean that she was naturally beholden to comply with his wishes at all.

"I won't be long," she reassured herself, bouncing upon her heels in preparation while she faced the airlock door. "Just a few minutes. That's all."

Sneakily, for no other reason other than to help sell her headstrong attitude, Roahn crept over to the airlock door and palmed the cabin release to open it. As expected, the lock flashed red and blared an alarm at her. Her father had locked it from the outside, as a precaution against her violating his rules. Typical, she figured, but not debilitating.

What Shepard had not taken into account was that a simple airlock door utilized software that could easily be broken into and abused. Roahn, knowing her father, already was familiar with the fact that her father could not code to save his life, and as such would have no way to tell that she had the ability to break out of this ship whenever she pleased. If Tali were here though, she would have been in trouble. After all, who else would Roahn have learned the language of programming from?

Roahn opened her omni-tool and began scrolling through the list of cracking programs at her disposal. She selected one that was compatible with the software that the airlock door used and successfully synced the two devices together. The crack tore through the firewalls in mere moments and five seconds later, the lock flashed green.

With a violent hiss of air, the door depressurized and slid open.

"Too easy," Roahn chuckled, pleased with her success.

She then delicately lifted her foot and placed a single toe upon the walkway of the ramp.

One small step…

"Sorry, dad," Roahn hissed in triumph, "but I _know_ when I'm ready."

Then the girl hopped out with a laugh, planting her feet now firmly upon the walkway. She was now on Omega!

Giddy from her rule-breaking and flushed with excitement, Roahn began to jog down the walkway, taking the twisting turns at a careful pace as she headed through the docks to the exit. She was so caught up in her little traversal that she failed to notice, near the door that lead to the open Omega plaza, that there were little shattered bits of glass strewn upon the ground along with tiny bloodstains that had been splattered in a dripping pattern. There were just too many things on her mind for her to take stock of that such tiny details managed to pass her by.

Her attention span would be worsened even more by the time she made it through the door and out onto the open area of Omega's main plaza.

"Keelah," she could only say.

Just the sheer number of people before her eyes threw Roahn for a loop. So… many… people. All in one place! Sure, there had been areas on Rannoch that had a plentiful number of inhabitants wandering around, but that crowd was relatively thin compared to the throng of living beings all congregating around her.

Asari. Humans. Turians. Elcor. Salarians. There was even a hanar or two! Roahn had never seen such a vibrant conglomeration of races coexisting together. They all lived _here_ , on this station! Being confined to a sparsely populated planet for all her life, the antitheses of her upbringing in living color was mind-boggling for Roahn to behold.

Things got even more wondrous for her when she looked up and was barely able to see the ceiling, as the metallic pillars rose up all around her like towering skyscrapers, boring deep into the rock far above. She rotated on the spot, eyes wide, as her legs became wobbly in awe at the sight.

So, this was Omega.

Grinning madly to herself, Roahn had to fight to control herself as she stood in the middle of the chaotic plaza. So many sights to see, all right here. Simply people-watching was fascinating in of itself, but it was the intense urban life of the station that really drew Roahn in. She could never get tired watching the same holographic advertisements blare themselves on repeat, drawn in by the intense colors and shapes. She listened with a keen ear in fascination, at the muted conversations that passerby had with each other. Most of the snippets that she heard had either to do with a hard day at work or the prospect of spending time at a club somewhere. Nothing particularly interesting by itself but, as a collective, _enthralling_.

Everything was just so unbelievable to witness. This place was just so foreign, but that was part of the appeal to her. Roahn loved seeing new things and her eyes soaked up every detail as fast as she could muster.

Picking a lane to go with the flow, Roahn slipped into the crowd, the rest of the passerby not giving her a glance in her direction. Roahn smirked. She was invisible here. No one paid much mind to a child on Omega, much less a _quarian_. To them, she was probably just another street urchin that made a living begging for scraps. Just the kind of person the average Omegan citizen would want to ignore.

The streets were irregular here, twisting and turning from one corner to the next. If it weren't for Roahn's HUD keeping track of her position, she would have been lost in moments. The air had an orange haze the further she looked, a fine coating of copper dust sticking to her visor. The air filters in her helmet did an admirable job in sterilizing the air for her, but there was still a taste of iron upon her tongue whenever she took a breath. A metallic taste, lingering in the back of her throat.

Much, much more different than Rannoch.

Suddenly, a leering turian jutted out from the crowd, towering over Roahn. His hands were scarred, with pieces of his carapace missing, exposing soft flesh underneath. His eyes were bleary and watery, the sclera bleeding into the corneas. The alien held out a single-use syringe to her, a gurgling laugh coming from his throat.

"Hey there, little girl," the turian uttered. "Need a fix?"

Roahn was so appalled at the offer that she instinctively recoiled, making a noise that sounded like ' _Urk!_ ' Involuntarily panicking, Roahn shot back into the crowd, well away from the turian, already hyperventilating at what had just happened.

Why would someone _do_ that to her? She was just a kid. What monsters would sell such horrible stuff to someone like her?

Unfortunately, Roahn would soon receive a more direct lesson on Omega's culture, much to her detriment.

To hammer that point home, a gagging human, thin and gangly, stumbled over from an outdoor noodle bar before he doubled over and started to cough his lungs out next to her, spraying spittle near Roahn's boots. Roahn jumped back in surprise, and the sick man blearily lifted his head, briefly making eye contact. Roahn was shocked at how red the human's eyes were, blurry and swollen. The human had an unkempt beard, his skin was oily and covered with bruises, not to mention that he looked practically malnourished.

The human broke their mutual stare as he fell to his knees so that he could continue to dry heave. Roahn glanced around in worry, finding that none of the pedestrians were paying the sick man any mind. They were content to disregard the misfortune of others as long as their own lives were not impacted.

She took a tentative step forward, her hand outstretched as she tried to look upon the man, wanting to help.

Just then, the human reared his head, pupils dilated, and without warning, explosively vomited blood onto the ground. Roahn shrieked and jumped back, colliding into a passing asari, who grunted and shoved the girl away with a rough move. Roahn tripped and fell to the ground with a grunt, mere feet away from where the stricken man was. The ailing human's eyes then rolled up into his head and he passed out in his own gore, his chin so bloody it took on a slick color of black.

Roahn, on all fours, had her mouth agape as the fierce red color became permanently seared in her brain.

" _Another junkie_ ," Roahn heard someone gripe.

"… _Third OD I've seen today_ …"

"… _ridiculous. What a waste…_ "

Panting, Roahn clutched at her chest as she rapidly stood back up and backed away from the unconscious human, who was most certainly dying in front of her. She froze in place, the throng of people moving around her dispassionately, as if she was but a rock planted in the middle of a river. Everyone stepped over the man, over the puddle of blood, and carried on without bothering to help him. Roahn snapped her head back and forth, desperate and hopeful to see someone come from out of the crowd to lend the man aid.

But no one stepped forward.

The human would die with all of Omega watching.

Feeling sick, a churning feeling growing in her stomach, Roahn backed away from the limp body as she rejoined the flow of traffic, her body moving of its own accord. It took all of her strength to tear her eyes away from the motionless human but she was able to with a wrenching motion, the action bringing stinging tears to her eyes.

She then proceeded to run through the crowd, half-blinded by her terrible grief. She pushed through a jungle of arms and legs, trying so hard not to cry, ashamed at the dispassion that everyone had showed, unwilling to help a stricken man when he had needed help the most.

Yet Roahn realized… she had done nothing either. She had stood by and watched, like the rest of them.

Was she as much to blame as everyone else?

Overwhelmed with regret, Roahn shot her way through the crowd until she was back in the plaza from which she had initially entered. Running until she was in a clear area, Roahn spotted an empty bench and made a beeline for it, no longer caring about the strange setting that she was situated in. Plopping down in relief, Roahn drew her arms around herself, finding that she was shivering unconsciously, the images of the crimson blood refusing to leave her mind.

 _It wasn't your fault_ , Roahn tried to tell herself, though she didn't completely believe her own words. _There was nothing you could have done._

But could there have been something? Could she have moved faster, maybe have found someone that actually would have been able to save the man? The possibilities were endless and Roahn found her guilt merely compounding as she cursed her idleness.

Perhaps her father had been right after all. Omega was not a place for good memories. It would be a long time before Roahn would forget the sight of the human's dead eyes, staring helplessly up at her from the ground, the light leaving him in seconds.

Roahn gave a tiny heave, her eyes feeling hot. Her throat trembled and she drew herself in even closer.

 _I'm done here_ , she silently declared. _I'm going back._

Sullenly, Roahn hopped from the bench, vowing never to disregard her father so blithely again. Her arms hanging limply at her sides, Roahn began to trudge over to the doorway that led to the docks, hoping that she had not been gone long enough for her father to notice that she was missing.

However, that would be the least of her worries, for Roahn soon felt a powerful hand grip her shoulder, hard enough to halt her in place. Roahn staggered, the breath vanishing from her throat in an instant, completely robbing her of her ability to cry out for help.

"This is no place for a girl like you to be," Roahn heard a light voice murmur into her ear. "Someone like you could get into trouble quite easily here."

Teeth chattering, nerves ablaze, Roahn's neck felt like a rusty hinge as it took a great deal of effort to look up at the person who was tightly clamping at her shoulder.

Air flooding back into her lungs, she made a loud gasp.

* * *

Aria T'Loak may have been the most powerful individual on Omega at the moment, but that did not mean that she was not predictable to a fault. Everyone on the station knew that Aria liked to spend the bulk of her free time in her own private suite in the most expansive club on Omega: Afterlife. It served as a kind of throne room for Aria, a place for her to take stock of the subjects below her while also partaking in the usual rounds of amusement that such a club would usually have to offer. Dancing, drinking, the works. A contained microcosm that was a perfect simulation of the larger station that held it amongst its ore.

Shepard figured that was the best place to start looking.

The entrance to Afterlife was clearly marked, seeing that the imposing triangular front had the name of the club emblazoned upon it in towering letters. A line that curved around the block was made up of frequenters looking to enter, admittance only being allowed by a rather impassive elcor. A set of shallow steps led up to the main door, where a couple batarian bouncers were posted. And none of it intimidated Shepard in any way.

Shepard, not wanting to waste any time, skipped the line entirely and walked right up to the front door, noting a few angry grumbles emanating from the people who had been waiting in the line for hours already. Such a brazen move was inevitably going to be noticed and the batarian bouncers swiftly stepped in front of him before he could enter, their faces twisting into sneers.

"And who might _you_ be?" one of the bouncers crossed his arms, not recognizing Shepard with his beard. Tough break, for had they been a little more observant, they would have identified the human in seconds.

"The Duke of Edinburgh," Shepard drawled, his flaring anger already getting the better of him.

The second bouncer snorted. "A comedian. Nice. Get back in the damn line, vagrant."

Shepard glared at the alien who had just spoken. "I'm not just any transient in the crowd. I have business with Aria," he responded sharply.

" _Everyone_ has business with Aria. See everyone here before you? Where do you think all of their taxes go?"

"I think she'll make an exception for me."

"Not unless we know who you are," the batarian hissed.

Shepard could have rolled his eyes and simply gone ahead in punching the two bouncers into submission, but he quelled that desire for as long as he could muster, forcing himself to remain calm.

"Fine," Shepard sighed in a rather dramatic fashion, before tapping his own chest. "I'm Commander Shepard."

The tone that Shepard had used had been so utterly bereft of any dramatic heft that he knew that the weight of his statement would be completely lost on the two. It was what he had intended and had resulted in the predicted outcome.

Both bouncers struggled to hide their surprise and amusement at that. "You're the third guy today to use that excuse on us," the first batarian said. "Everyone always wants to jump the line by claiming that they're ' _Commander Shepard_.' It's getting quite old, believe it or not. You and the array of idiots need to get some new material."

Again, Shepard's bedraggled appearance was working both for and against his favor.

Shepard just kept his hands at his sides, trying to think of the next move he should take. He was considering just ducking into a shoulder charge, ramming the first bouncer through the door, drawing his weapon on the second, and making his way to Aria's perch before anyone could raise an alarm as his current plan of action. He could already envision the carnage and the sound of bones breaking in his head, his mind appearing to calm, to be at peace, as he slowly accepted the inevitable that violence would be the only language universally understood on Omega.

This place was cancerous. All of his bad habits were being drawn out like poison into a well. The essence of brutality; just the sort of mindset the Commander thrived in.

He would have enacted his savage maneuver too, but one of the bouncers unexpectedly received a call on his omni-tool at that time, causing Shepard to hold off for the time being, awaiting new data.

The first batarian gave a shifty-eyed glare at Shepard before he answered the person who was calling him. The conversation did not last long and the bouncer said not a word, but Shepard did notice that the alien's expression was constantly drooping lower and lower the more the person on the other end talked.

Fifteen seconds later, the bouncer deactivated the call and, with a gesture of acceptance, shrugged his shoulders. "Aria says that you can come through," he told Shepard.

In a flash, the Commander's presence faded from Shepard's head. Raw, unfettered emotion flooded Shepard, causing him to take a grateful gasp of salty, silt-filled air. His head hurt from all the blood pooling there and his temples throbbed angrily.

But calm still lingered. That was perhaps the most fortuitous outcome of the day so far.

Their antagonistic expressions abruptly lifted, the two batarians stepped aside, already putting Shepard out of their thoughts. The human faltered for a moment, a bit startled at the sudden capitulation, and lifted his head upwards, spotting a security camera nestled into a darkened corner there. Someone must have been keeping tabs on him the moment he stepped onto the premises. Not giving the batarians any acknowledgement, clearly not wanting to test his newfound luck, Shepard quickly stepped through the door and into Afterlife.

The hallway beyond was shaped like a trapezoid, acting as a lobby of sorts that provided some sort of quiet from the pounding music that Shepard could discern from just beyond the next door. The floor was comprised of a metal that looked burnt red in the dark lighting. Stiff sofas flanked the aisle, and the words "AFTERLIFE" blazed gloriously at the far end of the room. The walls were coated with holographic flames that simply served to hammer the idea home of descending through the fires of hell to reach the goal at the end. It certainly cemented the evil atmosphere that this place exuded, but Shepard knew it was all theatrics and that nothing here should be taken too seriously.

As Shepard entered Afterlife, he had a brief moment to savor the relative ease of the environment in which his ears were currently functioning in, before a wall of bass-heavy sound came in and smashed Shepard full-on in the face.

He squinted his eyes and yawed his jaw at the noise. Dance music. Bass pumped up on full. Trebles so warped they sounded scratchy. Throbbing in the eardrums. What a dreadful cacophony.

The very air seemed to vibrate from how loudly the music in the club was pulsating, but it was an aspect that Shepard was determined to muster himself through. In any case, he proceeded to walk through Afterlife, making his way over to the private staircase that led to Aria's level.

Afterlife was something of an outlier compared to Omega's usual aesthetic. Whereas the majority of the station was run down, decrepit, and dust-covered, Afterlife was a polished and lethal machine. While by no means sparkling clean, Afterlife had enough care looking after it to make the club into a place that people actually wanted to go to. The music, while admittedly terrible, was popular enough with the locals that they relished the chance to let loose on the dance floors in time to the backlit tiles in the floor that took on the appearance of dirty ice. Cheap booze and a lively drug scene made it hip with the younger folks who were looking to get trashed after work, eager to get themselves wrapped up in an overdose.

Shepard did not really care for this place. Afterlife, like its owner, was a little too intense for Shepard to remain here comfortably for long. Everything was just too _in-your-face_ here, from the gigantic holographic pink tower in the middle of the club that synced music videos along to the assigned beat, to the pulverizing spotlights that did nothing but blind everyone, and to the crazy torches that fanned huge flames close to the ceiling. It was all too… _much_ , and that was not even discounting the clientele, which Shepard knew could be boorish and hostile if one picked the wrong fight here.

Aria's booth was on the opposite side of the club and there were always guards from her outfit that were flanking the stairwells. However, the mercenaries must have been alerted ahead of time that Aria was to receive a guest and they gave Shepard no grief as he started the ascension.

Upwards towards the end. The end of Omega.

At the top, the resulting booth jutted partially over the dance floor, giving the occupants inside an unobstructed view of the people down below. Four people were currently in the booth, two more guards, a young human woman, and an asari. A U-shaped couch, made out of fine leather, wrapped around the ends of the booth, and sitting right in the middle, with the human girl cuddled right next to her, was the pirate queen herself.

Aria T'Loak.

She had not aged a day since the last time Shepard had seen her. Expected, given the long lifespan of asari. Her skin was a deep purple color and tribal markings adorned her eyebrows, temples, and even her lip, breaking up her otherwise smooth pallor. Aria was clad in her usual style of wardrobe: a partially revealing jumpsuit in which belts wrapped all around the asari's body for a snug fit but leaving slits of the skin of her sides out in the open, and a white jacket, also leather and emblazoned with the Omega logo, donned on top of it. She exuded sexuality, but Shepard knew that it was all psychological on Aria's part. The asari had gotten to where she was through centuries of experience and she was going to exploit every edge she had to get out on top, no matter what. If choosing to wear a provoking attire was going to give Aria an advantage over anyone who might be more responsive to carnal desires, then Aria would be a fool to not dominate such an encounter.

Shepard was not particularly worried about his safety here. Since they last spoke, the two of them had parted on civil terms after Shepard had lent his aid in taking back Omega from Cerberus twelve years ago, which had allowed Aria to resume her position of power here. During the siege, Aria had explicitly pressed to Shepard that she had wanted to create a bloodbath of epic proportions with the occupying force, but Shepard, averse to such wanton violence back then, had managed to talk her out of it. That alone had not been a simple task to achieve, as Aria was one of the most stubborn people Shepard had ever met, to the point where they tended to butt heads on the most trivial of topics from time to time. Aria did not like being told what to do, especially when it came to criticizing the level of violence she employed. Shepard thought Aria to be a menace and Aria thought of Shepard as soft. But because Shepard had held up his part of the bargain by assisting Aria from beginning to end, he had gained a significant portion of the asari's respect, which was not something to be discounted lightly. Aria was not the most trusting of people to begin with, so having her as a staunch ally was a rare distinction given to few.

Aria did not say a word just yet, but the look in her eyes was hard and piercing, directed right at Shepard. Immediately, he knew she recognized him. He swallowed, despite himself, as he tried to steel his mind.

Still remaining maddingly silent, Aria gave a quick movement of her hand, a brushing motion, and without needing to be told, the guards walked down the staircase that Shepard had entered, giving the two some privacy. The human girl that was still cuddled up to Aria, scantily-clad, did not seem to grasp the situation until Aria rudely jerked her shoulder, causing the girl to bounce upright. Aria then soundlessly tilted her head, an order for the girl to go off and occupy herself. With a pitiful sigh, the girl stood and sauntered past Shepard, but not before she winked at him and sashayed her hips in a playful manner as she went by. The action from the girl perturbed Shepard slightly. He also found it slightly disconcerting that the girl was decked out in a dress that barely went below her hips and that he had more of a view of her than he would have liked when the dress hiked up as she walked. Shepard ruffled himself all over and trained his blue eyes back onto Aria.

"You like her?" Aria finally spoke, her tone hinting at amusement as she referred to the young girl who was now nowhere in sight. "She calls herself Emma. You can have her, if you want."

Trying not to let his disgust show too much, Shepard just shook his head. "She's not exactly my type."

Aria gave a pensive nod.

"Good answer," the asari grinned. "She's with me at any rate, no matter how… promiscuous she might seem. Well, I can always call a girl over for you if you want, if you're interested."

"That's quite all right," Shepard said evenly. "Won't be necessary."

Aria bared teeth in a wide smile as she folded a leg over the other and leaned backwards onto the couch. "Ah, yes," she pretended to remember. "I forgot. You're _spoken_ for now. Or, should I say… _were_."

Shepard felt a pressure in his temples flare at the same time his vision turned slightly red. "I'm not here to discuss my family with you, Aria."

"Sore subject? I wouldn't understand your life anyway. Never had the inclination to 'settle down' as one tends to put it. But maybe you can help me understand something. How content are you now, being a widower?" Aria arced what would constitute as an eyebrow, clearly enjoying pushing Shepard's buttons.

Shepard did not respond right away, knowing that a murderous glint was probably inhabiting his eyes right about now. A potentially fatal mistake—Aria was one of the most powerful biotics he had ever seen, and if she so much as detected a whiff of violence directed at her, she would be liable to rip him apart, their previous association be damned.

But Aria laughed first and gave a dismissive wave, breaking eye contact first, enjoying the pained look on Shepard's face. "Ah, you're no fun," she pretended to gripe. "Still the same… serious… damnable man." She eyed Shepard up and down. "But I don't think I'm wrong in saying that you look like shit, Shepard."

 _Nice_ , Shepard thought. _Appreciate it._

"Happy to have disappointed you, Aria," Shepard gritted out in relief, his throat already feeling sore.

The asari continued to smirk as she patted a spot upon the sofa cushions, an obvious sign for Shepard to take a seat. Some solidarity, at least. Maybe now he could get down to business. Shepard, despite all his fortitudes, knew that refusing Aria this simple request would be taken as an insult to her hospitality, so he dutifully complied, but only after he waited a few seconds to show his restraint.

Aria loudly tapped her fingers upon the hard leather of the couch as she continued to appraise Shepard's appearance. "Your arrival is an unexpected surprise, Shepard," she said. "Not only has no one seen you for—what was it, at least a decade now?—but the very fact that you choose to show up on _Omega_ first is… interesting. What, are you going to tell me that you _missed_ me after all these years?"

"Don't flatter yourself, Aria," Shepard said sharply.

"My, my. Testy, aren't we? You should be a little more considerate. If anyone else used that sort of tone towards me, I would feel rather inclined to have their tongue cut out simply for my amusement."

Shepard's hands curled in as he leaned forward. "But you and I both know that I am not just anyone else."

"As if I could forget?" Aria's wicked smile broadened. " _Please_ , Shepard. I haven't gone senile just yet. But you and that fat fucking bleeding heart of yours haven't really done wonders for the upkeep around here. After all, you _were_ somewhat of a hindrance to me the last time you were here, remember? When we were both kicking Cerberus off my station? The entire time you were trying to control my… what was the phrase you used? ' _Manic bloodlust_.' And like a waif, I let that do-gooder behavior take hold of me, so… thanks for that."

Judging from Aria's expression, the asari was not very thankful.

"If I recall correctly," Shepard corrected, "you were busy fantasizing about the dozen different types of ways that you were going to torture and mutilate the leader of the occupational forces here. One method in particular that you seemed to have your heart set on was that you were going to remove Petrovsky's digestive system violently through his mouth and place his organs in a jar of formaldehyde. _Pardon me_ if I did not want to be involved in something like that."

"Shepard, your ignorance is showing. The whole need for violence was not something that was entirely up to me," Aria pointed out, strobe lights flaring behind her head and casting large shadows on the wall beyond. "The flagellation of Cerberus needed to cement my rule on Omega, yes, but it would also have served another purpose, one you civilized outsiders have never understood."

"Why don't you enlighten me?" Shepard's face turned dark at the same time the music temporarily dropped out in the distance.

"Simple. You don't know Omega. We're not beholden by _your_ rules or laws. In the Terminus, the law is dictated by the strongest. To do that, shows of force are sometimes required. If some people need to be murdered in the street for the greater good of keeping order, then that's the way it's going to be. Turns out that, when people get used to all the killing and the slaughter, they become desensitized to it. They start to crave it themselves. So, we might as well capitalize on this mindset. Throw the civilians a bone every now and then. Stage a public execution—make it extremely gory—and give people something outside of the norm. They all love it. People flock from every district just to get a glimpse of blood when they hear us offering it. It's a facet that's engrained into each pathetic little worm that lives upon this station."

Shepard could only shake his head, his frown deepening. "The devil you know…" he mused.

Aria explosively sighed. "Oh, stop judging me, Shepard. It won't do you any good here. You knew what you had signed up for when you accepted my invitation to get a little payback on your progenitors. And you completed your task, quite admirably, I might add. I'd even go so far in saying that no one's given me as much effort as you have, and it would not behoove me to forego demonstrating my gratitude to you for the rest of your natural life."

"The gratitude of Aria T'Loak, eh?" Shepard tightened his hands together as he looked upon Aria with the barest shred of mirth.

The asari shrugged. "Not something that can be trivialized, you know."

Shepard understood that clearly. He knew that Aria had the ability to accomplish tasks that very few people in this galaxy could. With a mere snap of her fingers, Aria could raise an army to fight upon his behalf, lock down the entire station at a moment's notice, or even command someone to kill themselves for an ideal, all because of the power she had as Omega's self-appointed ruler. This was a person that people would unquestionably die for to gain notoriety or respect, perhaps both. Such devotion was highly impressive… but that was not the sort of aspect that Shepard was looking for.

"I'm only here because I have little choice," Shepard responded. "Believe me, Aria, I didn't come here to partake in Omega's… neighborliness."

"No doubt. Such a _responsible_ man like you would probably not want to hang out here anyway. But the question still stands: if you aren't here to reminisce about the good old days, why _are_ you here?"

Down to business. That was the side of Aria he could deal with.

"I was told that you're the only controller of a certain substance I… need," Shepard said, keeping his voice low, as if quieting himself would give Aria the impression that he was bringing her into his confidence. Aria liked it when people trusted her with information—it made her all the more pliable to flattery and logic.

Aria gave an amused look but did not rise to the obvious prickle. "Go on."

"I need to know if you have what I'm looking for."

"Then spit it out! What is it? Drugs, people, money? I can't help you if you won't tell me what it is you're looking for!"

Shepard was stone-faced as he edged closer to the asari, blinking as another spotlight drifted too close to his face. "I don't want any questions from you. All I need is a drug."

Aria nodded, suddenly serious. "That can be arranged. What drug did you have in mind?"

"Entolimod."

The asari blinked before she screwed up her face in incredulity. She then shook a few times from soundless chuckles. "That's _it?_ Shepard, I'm almost disappointed that you constantly undervalue your worth to me. The debt I have to you is worth far more than a drug like this. Entolimod's really all you want?"

"I wouldn't ask you for this unless it was important," Shepard said plainly, the image of his wife frustratingly lingering in his mind right now. "Such a request doesn't cause you to bat an eye?"

"Hell, if you asked for a 5% cut of all my profits, I wouldn't bat an eye even then."

In no time flat, an out-of-breath turian came from up the staircase, trying very hard not to pant out loud, with a medium-sized metallic box clutched between their hands. Another one of Aria's endless cadre of mercs. The turian set the box down next to where Shepard was sitting and slunk off after receiving a nod of approval from Aria.

Shepard partially slid the top of the box open, revealing the top row of clear packages made out of hard plastic, each one containing vials of the medicine. There had to be around sixty vials in all in the container. Satisfied that he had gotten what he had asked for, Shepard slid the box closed again.

"I must say," Aria spoke up once more, "I'm not finding you odd that you're here asking me for medicine. But what _is_ odd is the fact that you're asking for a countermeasure against radiation poisoning."

"I told you," Shepard looked up from the box, "I only wanted the drug, not an interrogation."

"Fine, fine," Aria held up her hands in a dramatic fashion, voice cool. "No need to explain. I already have an idea for why you need it. Just found your demand intriguing, especially since entolimod is an extremely limited product on Omega, not to mention highly in demand."

That gave Shepard pause and he felt something hitch in his chest. "How in demand are we talking?"

"Enough to know that there's not nearly enough supply to fill it."

Just sitting next to this box was starting to make Shepard feel tainted. He screwed up his face as he laid a hand upon the cold metal top, his gaze sinking to the floor as his head felt several pounds heavier. "People really need it badly over here, then?"

"They're not taking it to get a fix, that's for certain. Come on, Shepard, the main source of income on Omega stems from its eezo deposits, and what do you think brings the most jobs on Omega? Working in the eezo mines, that's what. And, correct me if I'm wrong, but Omega's rather volatile and lawless reputation kind of extends over to basic job functions, or to be more specific, our safety net. Let's face it, our job security over here is not going to be winning any awards anytime soon. With the lack of failsafes and that our anti-rad suits are not as new nor as advanced as anything the Alliance has in its stocks sort of put a hamper on one's lifespan. Combine that with the fact that eezo is fiercely radioactive, and… well…"

"You've made your point," Shepard brusquely cut Aria off as he opened the box again, this time withdrawing the felt sack that came included with the package, and grabbed a few handfuls of the container's contents, dropping them all into the sack. After taking a mere third of the box, Shepard closed it and stood from the couch with only the bag in his hand. "I can get by with just this."

Aria glanced from the two-thirds full box that was being left behind and back to Shepard, her lip curling in levity. "Never patched that bleeding heart up, eh, Shepard?"

"Save it, Aria," Shepard rolled his eyes. "We're finished here."

Shepard then started to head down the shallow staircase but not before Aria called out to him one final time.

"Before you go, do you want to see something interesting?"

Shepard took his time in turning back around. "What could you possibly have in mind?"

A narrow smile appeared on the asari's face as a flash of cruelty came across her features. "Call it a stroke of nostalgia. All you have to do to experience it is to follow me."

As Aria brushed by him and headed towards a hallway off to the side, Shepard was feeling very wary about taking the asari up on her offer. Aria always had an ulterior motive to her requests. She was a very blunt individual, but that did not mean that she had no enjoyment for toying with other people. The fact that she was being rather tight-lipped with him right now was sort of an indication that she had a surprise up her sleeve.

Yet against his better judgment, he followed.

With the sack full of medicine slung against his back, Shepard closely walked behind Aria as they traveled down a sloping hallway with a low ceiling. Dim halogen lamps provided just the barest amount of illumination so that Shepard would not smack his head against a stray beam. The floor beneath them was an oily grate and the acrid smell of ozone was more apparent here.

Shepard guessed they were taking a walkway between two pillars. That would explain why he could get a clearer whiff of the eezo smelters—poor ventilation here. The iron taste on his tongue was back and he tried his damnedest to keep himself from gagging, not wanting to show discomfort in Aria's presence. No telling how she could use that against him.

Just as Shepard was about to ask out loud how much further they were going to walk, the shaft levelled out, the two of them coming to a junction with a much wider avenue of traversal, yet still terribly lit. Aria took the first door on the left, expecting Shepard to be right behind her, which he still was. Cold, blue light wafted from the interior of the room, as well as a sizzling noise… and the muted sound of screaming.

But who was the one screaming?

The room beyond was small, barely large enough to fit four standing people comfortably. It was sparse of any equipment save for a singular table and was utterly featureless and unremarkable. The only distinguishing aspect was a large window on the opposite wall that spanned its length. Through that window, inaccessible from this room, was another chamber, the source from where the harsh blue illumination had been blaring. That seemed to be the area that Aria had the most interest in, evident in the way that she stood up to where her nose was nearly touching the glass, her arms crossed over her chest expectantly.

Shepard maneuvered from behind the asari for a better look. What he saw chilled him right down to the bone.

Two other people were in the room—one turian, the other human. The turian was pacing around the circular room, a callous look of greedy revelry in his eyes. He had a bloodstained knife in one hand that continued to drip upon the floor as he walked around the human, who in contrast was situated in the center of the room. The human, dressed in only the lower half of a form-fitting bodysuit, hung suspended on his stomach in the middle of the room, his limbs splayed out in all directions. He was young, in his late twenties or so, with short brown hair, and a plain face, although his expression was distorted in one of pain as inhibitor gauntlets stretched out his limbs and kept him hanging in midair, slow bolts of soft-looking electricity gently arcing from the gauntlets to the generators hanging on the ceiling.

It soon became apparent to Shepard that he was bearing witness to a torture session after, upon closer inspection, he spotted a bevy of cuts marring the human's torso, many of the wounds still weeping blood. The human yelled in pain as the turian bent down to nick at a spot upon the man's shoulder, creating a fresh slew of fluids, his screams muted behind the window.

Disgusted, Shepard took a step back, staring at Aria in astonishment, who was conversely not at all affected by the gruesome sight.

"What is this?" Shepard asked in horror, torn between looking at Aria's gaze of malice and the screaming of the human beyond the clear partition.

"A case of me having to repeat a lesson," Aria simply said as she reached over to a nearby desk, flimsily made out of aluminum, and tossed an object over to Shepard. He caught it in a one-handed maneuver, finding that the object was heavier than he thought. Piece of armor—a shoulder plate. Explained why it weighed a lot more than he figured upon first glance. He turned it over in his hands and spotted a circular insignia, one that was more than familiar to him, within was printed a stylized seal of the heads of three animals: a lion, a goat, and a snake.

Chimera's logo.

"Recognize it, do you?" Aria asked, still watching the turian scrape at the bound human, not paying Shepard much mind.

Unseen by the asari, Shepard nodded. "Chimera." He then looked out to the prisoner, his features starting to harden as well. "Was he the one wearing this?"

"Him and a squad of three others," Aria scowled. "Apparently they didn't get the memo from the last organization that tried to occupy my station. At the very least, I won't make the same mistake of being too lackadaisical this time around. I'm nipping this problem in the fucking bud right here, right now."

Now there was a sizzling noise and Shepard looked over just in time to see the turian apply a shock stick to the human. The prisoner yelled and convulsed, and dark smoke began to rise from his body. Shepard wrinkled his nose, almost imagining the smell from the man's cooked flesh.

"What are you hoping to accomplish with this?" Shepard asked, his eyes squinting in a grim fashion.

"What do you mean?" Aria shrugged nonchalantly.

" _This_. The torture. You trying to divulge intelligence out of them? I don't see your man in there asking any questions."

"That's because these idiots don't have any intelligence that I want," Aria growled. "That man in there, the one I have all trussed up, he's just a grunt. Residing at the bottom of the food chain. He's not privy to any information that I would consider important. At this point, all I can do with him is make him and whoever is dumb enough to set foot onto my station into messages."

" _Corpses_ , you mean," Shepard sighed.

Aria shuffled around, giving Shepard quite a stiff frown. "Cerberus, Chimera, they're all cut from the same stock. They're both ambitious and stupid enough to try and thumb their noses in my direction. Which, essentially, means that they're breaking the one rule on Omega. If I turn a blind eye to these people moseying about wherever they please, then how would I look if that one rule is to be so brazenly broken by these interlopers?"

As cruel as it sounded, Shepard did have a good idea where Aria was coming from. Twelve years ago, Aria had been ousted from Omega by Cerberus forces in what had been a sneaky yet decisive coup for the organization. Aria had been caught off guard when Cerberus had enacted its plan to take over Omega and had been one of the asari's rare defeats in her life. Unwilling to be cowed, Aria had vowed revenge for months until she had amassed enough forces to take Omega back, in which she did so quite handedly. But in the long run, Aria would possesses a huge mistrust of any private military organization or gang other than her own, showing instead to demonstrate wanton and immediate violence towards any hapless antagonist that would dare cross her borders. An overreaction most likely, but considering Aria's collective experiences, sadly understandable.

It seems that Shepard was getting a firsthand taste of what happens when someone dared to try and test Aria's mettle. Fortunately, he had enough experience in dealing with the asari to know that Aria tended to back up her words with the force to match. A most violent force, definitely.

The turian torturer then approached the human with what appeared to be a large, metallic armband. He then proceeded to fasten this armband around the human's upper right arm, yanking it so tight that it was nearly cutting off the blood flow to the limb.

"Ah," Aria sighed in delight. "Finally, something interesting. Have you ever heard of a _nurkar-tarr_ band before, Shepard?"

"Can't say that I have," Shepard admitted, his glassy eyes unable to be torn from the scene.

"Oh, it's a fascinating little gadget," Aria gleamed. "It's a very old krogan torture device. Invented to inflict a large amount of pain without killing the host… within reason. You'll see what it does in a moment. Basically, it wraps around a limb of your choosing, and there are little teeth upon the interior of the band that press against the skin. The band can be activated, and the teeth _move_ , sliding along the band in a circular fashion, slicing the flesh in such a way that it strips it away from the muscle _whole_ , like removing a glove from a hand. Leaves everything immediately below the skin intact, funnily enough. The band automatically moves down the arm, taking the skin off as it goes… until there's nothing left but exposed muscle and bone. Point is, when it's activated…"

A buzzing noise then sheared its way through the glass window and the human immediately spasmed, his limbs trying dreadfully to shake in all directions. The human screamed, but the air had left his lungs in a pathetic wheeze, and his face became frozen in a wild and horrendous expression to the point where his eyes were bulging out of his head. The man's fingers twisted into claws and finally, a horrid howl of agony began to sound, a desperate shriek as the _nukar-tarr_ began setting to work.

"…it's not usually a pretty sight."

A deluge of blood immediately splattered the ground and continued in running rivulets. The _nukar-tarr_ placidly droned as it moved down the human's arm, impassive as its metallic face became stained red. Blood began streaming down the human's arm in wide waterfalls, right down to his fingers, looking like his limb had been dipped in red paint.

But as the _nukar-tarr_ whirred and crunched, the color of red became less and less pronounced. As it pooled on the ground, it congealed and blackened, spattering the grating below where the prisoner hung.

As the _nukar-tarr_ slipped down a few centimeters, Shepard's mouth hung agape as he spotted the first hint of ragged sinew and bloody muscle from the stripped arm. Slick cords of raw meat glistened in the low light. White deposits of fat nestled amongst the ligaments. A sharp knob of bone gleamed shockingly white. Blood poured from the newly exposed wound and dribbled in a constant stream.

The band moved down another inch.

Shepard had to turn away, nearly gagging at the sight.

"Have I offended your sensibilities?" Aria smirked, no doubt enjoying the fact that she was causing Shepard to be so uncomfortable. The prisoner was still screaming through the window as his arm was being de-gloved.

Shepard wiped his mouth and took a deep breath before straightening up. Minutely shuddering, he forced himself not to look directly at the howling man while more and more of his flesh was being stripped from his body—not all that easy, as the thrashing form in the corner of Shepard's eye was proving to be distracting. Keeping his consciousness at rest, Shepard just stared daggers of his own right back at Aria, silently cursing her for subjecting him to this monstrosity.

"Come on, Shepard," Aria taunted. "This is the part where you're going to try to appeal to my better nature, to try and convince me that there's another way to get what I'm after without using violence. Where's that prim and proper commander that I've gotten used to?"

"Why bother?" Shepard snapped back, trying not to wince at the echoing screams. "Nothing that I can say is going to change your mind now."

"Not even going to try?" Aria chuckled.

Shepard slowly shook his head, a great effort, one so monumental that he nearly had to hiss in pain of his own. "I'm not going to stoke your ego, Aria."

Aria beheld Shepard for a long while until she clucked her tongue and gave a miniscule shrug. "Maybe you do know me better than I thought. Interesting."

Next to them, the prisoner kept bellowing as the _nukar-tarr_ now made it down to his elbow. The torturer was simply stading by, placidly observing the results of the torture device, his expression ultimately disinterested. Shepard continued to ignore the sight, keeping his concentration firmly focused on the asari in front of him.

"Honestly," Shepard spoke laboriously, "it's not that hard to have you figured."

"Do tell."

Shepard took a wayward glance at the prisoner for as long as he dared before he lost his lunch, using the moment to suck in a foul breath, radiating a loathing so perverse that he hoped Aria could detect it wafting off of him in waves.

"It's the presentation, more or less," Shepard gritted. "It's always been the same with you, Aria. Like this game right now. You toy with living people and show the whole thing off to me in order to provoke a reaction. It's something that you've been trying to do to me ever since we first met. It's as if you've never really believed in the tenets that I've staked my trust in and, therefore, you've been trying to pervert my beliefs in order to see if I'm not at all the stellar 'golden boy' you constantly deride me to be." Shepard crossed his arms while Aria's face twisted unpleasantly. "It was never difficult to see what you were doing. The problem was trying to withstand your patient attacks. The overall point to all this is that you're in denial about one thing, and that's the fact that we have very little in common. Face it, Aria, we're never going to completely like each other, but it seems that you always had trouble in accepting that fact."

The human prisoner in the back, finally forgotten, let out one final keen before his body slackened and head drooped completely, having fallen unconscious from massive blood loss. The _nukar-tarr_ slipped from the man's arm to the floor with a clatter, encrusted with dried blood.

From the triceps to the fingers, the prisoner's dangling arm, the exposed muscle radiating fire, dribbled blood from the stripped fingertips. The tormented nerves caused the arm to quiver, exposed cords trembling in the warm air. The pain must have been excruciating.

"I've had men killed for less than what you've said to me," Aria uttered, the amusement having fled her eyes.

"Yet we both know that you take my frankness as a virtue," Shepard retorted in kind.

"If it weren't for your ability to be so infuriatingly correct…"

"Fortunately, I have a talent for discretion," Shepard inserted with a smirk of his own.

Aria nodded curtly, now apparently taken with a healthy dose of impatience now that the tide of their dialogue had fled from her shores.

"You know your way out?" Aria simply asked, her tone light enough to dictate to Shepard that their conversation had mercifully come to a close.

"I think I can find my way back," he affirmed.

The asari then tilted her head to the passed out prisoner in the other room. "You still have one last chance to pester me with your ideology. No remorse in the face of mutilating one of your own kind?"

Shepard sighed, palms sweaty as he felt his hands morph into fists once more. Aria was relentless but her bait was easily slapped aside this time. It was simply the fact that she never quite knew when to quit that irked him so.

Now he had an idea what Cerberus had been up against when they had made an enemy for life in the asari. He was at least thankful that their relationship had not devolved to such a state just yet.

"For him?" Shepard briefly turned away from the door to give Aria a parting, yet slightly mocking salute, "Just my sympathies."

Aria laughed at that, and even Shepard gave a grim smile before he ducked his head and made it back out into the hallway, lungs burning and head abuzz with activity.

Sympathies. What a useless gesture.

* * *

 _Paris_  
 _European Union_

Fernand Sarraf yawned as he waved his omni-tool in front of the ident lock of the office building on Rue d'Enghien. It was five in the morning in Paris, with brief spatters of sunlight dotting the clouds above. It had snowed last night, judging by the light dusting that coated the ground, causing the concrete walks to become rather slippery. Sarraf shivered in the cold air. He had not brought the right coat today. He had been counting on staying mostly warm throughout his commute, which did not require him to venture outside for most of the trip.

Fortunately, it would be warmer inside the building. Sarraf was grateful for that.

The lock outside of the building gave a singular beep before it flashed green, allowing Sarraf to step inside and take refuge from the blustery winds that bit at his cheeks, turning them to ice. He shook himself off, causing tiny dust puffs of snow to flutter to the ground and melt upon touching the floor.

Sarraf walked past the front desk, where the receptionist would usually be to greet him, except since it was so early, no one was at the desk at this time. The earliest shift usually began at nine. Sarraf was only here because he and his team had been working around the clock at compiling a particularly sensitive portfolio of data in preparation to send it out to their buyers.

" _Welcome to Pax Informatio_ ," the overhead speaker sounded as Sarraf stepped into the elevator, the ubiquitous greeting for every employee who came into the office.

It was the same greeting that Sarraf had to endure since the day he started here. What a mind-numbing blurb.

Pax Informatio was one of the leading consulting firms in the European Union, perhaps even in the world. They were the political arm of their parent company Egeria, who had diversified holdings in relation to the collection and dispersal of data spread across other corporations. Pax Informatio's services were expressly reserved for political campaigns and occasional forays into cryptology for the military. The work that they did was almost always sensitive. Compiling information on such public-facing individuals would doubtless have the risk of being secretive or damaging, perhaps even both. Yet, even in this business, the company had a good reputation for being very tactful with the intelligence that they had garnered. It was why they had such a high recommendation rate. They were the pros in the information game.

Sarraf was just one of many managers based in the Paris building, but in his line of work, the level of responsibility that was placed upon him technically gave him the impetus of control in a manner that would befit the ruler of a small country. In theory, Sarraf had the ability to make the lives of millions of people into a living hell—just with his keycard access alone, he could be able to access pertinent information of anyone he so pleased, such as either bank records, birth certificates, pension plans, sales of shares, right down to classified government documents. However, Sarraf prided himself on having such a steady moral compass that he was not concerned with his ability to wreak havoc just by sitting at his computer and sending out the wrong file. He was too far at peace with his current means of living to even think about shaking up society, even just a little bit. Tranquility certainly had its benefits.

However, the responsibilities that were currently on his head had grown lighter over time to the point where Sarraf tended not to consider the ramifications of the information he had at his disposal. Musing on such matters was only a distraction. He was here to work. Clients paid him for data and that was what he and his team worked on by themselves. And, from the indication his omni-tool his sent him an hour ago, every member of his team appeared to already be in the building. Apparently, they were all eager to be working on this project together.

Sarraf smiled. It felt good to be in charge of people who took the initiative. He so loathed slackers or people who failed to live up to their potential. Having an adaptable team made his job all the more easier.

But Sarraf was still so tired from having just woken up and from not having a stimulating drink, as it was still so early in the morning, that he did not realize at first, once the elevator doors had opened onto his floor, that the lights to the next level were still off. Not only that, but they were flashing weakly, in a broken manner. In his drowsy state, any deviations to his routine were easily discarded. It was only after he shouldered aside the glass door separating the elevator lobby from the work area did his ears pick up on something long before his eyes could confirm things.

It was quiet. All too quiet.

That was the first indication to Sarraf that something was amiss, and he gave himself a full-body shudder again, keen to wake himself up. His eyes were not deceiving him, as he sharpened his focus. Not only were the lights to the floor completely off, the only source of luminescence trying to squeeze in between the drawn blinds of the windows, there were also no voices to be heard in the air. That was quite odd. The work area was not a quiet place by any means. There would usually be a steady level of chattering from multiple voices, the muted tapping of hands at glass consoles, or from the constant beeping of the machinery dispensing notifications to each desk. Right now there was… nothing.

"Hello?" Sarraf called as he stepped out onto the floor, waiting for the automatic lights to flicker on and ultimately being disappointed when he was still being doused in darkness. "Benji? Irina? Anyone here?"

Of course no one answered. Sarraf bit his lip as he began to walk through the first rows of cubicles, his shoes treading lightly upon the carpeted ground. Broken glass crunched under his soles, giving Sarraf pause. He crept forward, an unfamiliar oily smell coming to his nostrils.

A thick smell. Tangible. Metallic. Sarraf wrinkled his nose.

Where the hell was everyone?

Yet as he peered through the openings that the cubicles afforded, Sarraf felt himself seize up as a limp hand, splayed out upon the ground, slowly came into view in front of one of the desks. It was hard to see, what with the contrast between the light from the windows desperate to enter and the darkness strong-arming his eyes into submission.

But that hand… that _hand_ …

Sarraf could not see who the hand belonged to. He ultimately would rather not look. All he could tell, from this distance, that whoever was lying on the floor of the ground that cubicle was in serious trouble, and that the skin of the hand was flecked with a dark and liquid substance.

A body.

 _Oh god_ , Sarraf thought, frozen in place. His first line of speculation automatically directed to grave portents. An intruder. A crazed gunman or something of that ilk. Here in the office. It explained the disarray… and the body. But Sarraf's mind was in such turmoil that, even though he was coming up with such conclusions, he was running through his thoughts so fast that he barely took any time to consider them.

That was why he barely moved until a banging noise from down the hall suddenly resounded, finally getting him to jump.

"Who's that?" Sarraf called, momentarily forgetting the fact that he was in danger before adding, "I warn you, I'm armed!"

That was a lie. The only thing that Sarraf had that could be considered a deadly weapon was a meat cleaver, and that was back in his apartment.

" _Fernand?!_ " A woman's voice, hysterical, resounded through the room. Muffled, as if was coming through a door. " _Fernand, is that you?!_ "

Sarraf recognized the voice. It was Rebekah, a woman he worked with. Her voice was coming over from the woman's bathroom, as well as the sound of her fists pounding upon the door.

"Rebekah?!" Sarraf uttered, more loudly this time, as he shot over to the bathroom door. "Rebekah! I'm here! I'm here! What's going on? Are you all right?"

" _Fernand! Fernand, help me!_ " the woman was on the verge of shrieking. " _He found us! He's trying to kill us! Get me out of here, please! Before he comes back!_ "

Rebekah was even more agitated than he was, and her use of vagaries was only complicating matters further and driving Sarraf's own hysteria up as well. Not only had he barely any clue what Rebekah was hawing about, but the urgency in her voice was making him think that he had wandered into danger and, like an idiot, had not realized it until it had been pointed out to him.

Hurriedly, Sarraf felt around the door like a drunkard, searching for the manual door lock. Every automated door had a failsafe that prevented the door from opening itself and thus requiring manual input. However, after a few seconds of blindly groping, Sarraf felt himself quickly losing patience.

" _Hurry, Fernand! Hurry!_ " Rebekah cried behind the door.

"I'm trying!" he gritted his teeth. "I can't see where to turn the lock!"

There was a noticeable pause as Rebekah tried to think this through. " _Are you standing in front of the doorway?_ "

"No, I'm more to the right of it. Why?"

" _Just keep still_."

Sarraf was about to press Rebekah for clarification when there was an explosion in his ears, his face was suddenly slashed by whirling objects, and something heavy hit him in the shoulder. He was spun nearly around, stars smashing into his eyes, and he fell to the ground with a wheeze. His left shoulder was throbbing something fierce—Sarraf tried to raise his arms to determine what was paining him, but only his right arm was working. The other one was limp as he laid upon the ground, suddenly drenched by a pool of blood—his blood—rapidly spreading from where he had fallen.

Peeling his hand away from where his shoulder had been hit, Sarraf saw that his palm was coated with redness, wet and slick. He uttered a miniscule groan as he pressed the hand back over the wound, trying to stem the gurgle of blood as it rushed past his fingers.

With a cavernous grinding noise, the bathroom door, now having a massive hole in it from something have blown out from the other end, was quickly rent aside as a large arm reached through the opening, shunting it so that the person on the other side could make himself known. The largest man— _or was it a thing?_ —that Sarraf had ever seen stepped into the office, a large smoking pistol clutched in a vise-like grip. Sarraf tasted the smoke of the pistol's blowback, finding himself shrinking in the face of a series of red-orange eyes, devil-like and omniscient as the mottled and uneven strobes of broken lighting smeared across the polished plates of the cyborg's chassis.

The enormous metal monster stepped around Sarraf, one of its heels splashing into Sarraf's blood, staining its foot and smearing Sarraf's life underneath.

" _Did you like my impression?_ " the Legionnaire taunted, still using Rebekah's voice.

Helpless, only Sarraf's eyes could open wide in the face of the demonic construction.

Without waiting for an answer, the Legionnaire bent down and grabbed a fistful of Sarraf's shirt, using it to haul the man to his feet. Sarraf winced as he felt shattered bone shift in his shoulder, bringing forth a fresh stab of pain that left him nearly breathless. The Legionnaire then carried Sarraf across the hallway, dragging the man past a few more motionless corpses that Sarraf had not even seen yet before he was rudely deposited into an empty chair in front of an activated console.

Wheezing, Sarraf resumed holding his hand against the gunshot wound in his shoulder, feeling the pain burrow like a fiery drill, deep beneath his skin. All he could think about right now was lessening the agony he was in. He closed his eyes, listening to his own shallow breathing, as the hoarse hisses from the cyborg echoed in the expansive room.

"I should have known…" Sarraf coughed, wincing as every rasp of his lungs felt like he was cracking more bones open. "Hackett's dossier. It was obvious that… there would be people after it. People like you. When he was killed… I should have sent it out to everyone."

"Then we should be thankful that you did not possess the virtue of foresight then," the Legionnaire said, now reverting to his usual two-timbered voice, one whisper and one growl eternally clashing against one another in an otherworldly rumble. The cyborg nudged Sarraf's chair closer to the console. "You know what you need to do."

"The… dossier?" Sarraf slurred. "You don't want just that. Once I give it to you, you'll just kill me. Like you killed everyone else. I know… how this works."

The eyes of all of Sarraf's colleagues were clumped together in the cubicle across from where Sarraf was currently sitting, their dead expressions looking dazed and filled with agony… yet their gazes all congregated on Sarraf. They silently pleaded for vengeance, but for him not to suffer as well. To be spared from the pain and the fate that had befallen all of them. Every one of their heads appeared to be blown out, with clear sections of their skulls just… missing. The result of high-powered slugs at close range. Empty heads and broken bodies. The blood and gore that stained the floor around the pile of bodies had already congealed, blackened with time. Sarraf could only blankly at the glassy orbs of the real Rebekah just a couple meters away, her auburn hair matted to her scalp, sticky with her blood.

The Legionnaire also followed Sarraf in staring at the deceased men and women. However, instead of trying to explain his reasoning for keeping Sarraf alive, the cyborg simply reached out a hand and harshly clamped it down upon the entrance wound in Sarraf's shoulder, squeezing tightly and causing the shattered bone to shift horribly around within the man's body.

Sarraf screamed as the Legionnaire's grip tightened. Blood spurted from between the metallic fingers, and the Legionnaire began to grope inside the wound, tearing the muscle and fat further, causing more blood to spill. The Legionnaire also flexed his hand, which snapped the already broken bones even more, splintering inside of Sarraf's shoulder and causing burst ossein fragments to create micro-tears in the man's body. Sharpened bone shards sheared against one another in a grinding fashion, agitating the bundles of nerves there. The result was a conflagration that practically detonated inside of Sarraf's shouder, and the man howled as his entire arm quickly became engulfed in his own blood, dripping profusely off the fingers of his lame hand.

" _Stop!_ " Sarraf yelled as he futilely tried to pry the Legionnaire's hand away, smearing blood upon the ice-cold limb. "Stop! I'll… I'll give it to you! I'll give you the dossier!"

For some, pain was a terrible motivator.

Immediately the Legionnaire's hand sprung loose and Sarraf gave a hard gasp as the pain came to an end so suddenly that tears sprang up in his eyes. He touched his shoulder gingerly, finding it nearly numb from all of the torment inflicted upon his injury.

"Go on," the Legionnaire then said behind him, the unusual voice now a gliding rasp. "You know where to find it."

Sarraf indeed knew where he had placed Hackett's dossier within the central memory, and, not wanting to be subjugated to such torture again, he navigated to the file in moments once he had caught his breath. But when he had the edit screen up on his terminal, his hands poised at deciding the fate of the file, he hesitated. For all he knew, what Hackett had sent him and Pax Informatio was a literal goldmine. Hackett had indicated in his initial message that he had sent over the missing link between Chimera and a notorious Alliance politician, with more evidence to come later. A vast conspiracy in the government, with this being the only shred of proof Sarraf knew of, and he was about to hand it over to the people who would almost certainly be damaged from its public release.

Sourly, Sarraf took stock of his options. The outbound extranet connection had been severed, so there was no way of sending this dossier out of this building. The only connection available to him was the Legionnaire's personal omni-tool, which was open and awaiting the file. It seemed that in order to survive, or at least to capitalize upon the vague notion of being virtuous, was to do something… outside the norm. Something bold.

To take a chance.

Immediately, Sarraf slammed on the _delete_ key and the entire dossier vanished from Pax Informatio's servers. The Legionnaire could only watch as the icon of the file disappeared without fanfare, a soundless blip that led to a white expanse upon the screen.

An electronic warble escaped the Legionnaire's vocabulator.

With a sigh of finality, Sarraf slumped in his chair, utterly drained. "There it is," he proclaimed tiredly, his blood already causing his shirt to stick to his skin. "You'll never get it now. If nothing else, you've wasted your time by coming here."

Sarraf was too weak to turn in his chair to take stock of the Legionnaire's reaction, but after he heard the first soft hints of a ruthless laugh behind him, the icy cold tendrils of dread began to claw at Sarraf's heart.

"Intriguing," the Legionnaire only whispered. "I never indicated that I wanted to take the file _back_. You've simply made it certain that Hackett's last wish will never come to fruition."

The second-to-last thing that went through Sarraf's head was the surging jolt of regret and horror from the very knowledge that he had been baited. The imaginary cries of shame from his dead colleagues seemed to rise up in a haunting chorus, inviting him to join the damned alongside them.

The bullet from the pistol was the final thing to run through Sarraf's head.

Blood sprayed in a wide arc, misting the screen of the terminal. Chunks of the man's skull soon splattered against the far wall as the bone of his head _erupted_ , the gas buildup having pressed against the interior of Sarraf's head, blowing it out and cooking the brain within.

Sarraf's body hit the ground, with most of his head missing.

The Legionnaire smoothly holstered his weapon, appraising the corpse of Sarraf as callously as one might appraise a sack of luggage. Now disregarding the wanton violence he had left in his wake, the cyborg casually strolled over to the elevator bay, leaving a trail of bloody footprints behind.

Before entering the nearest elevator, which was on standby, the Legionnaire raised his fist, clad in the golden light of his omni-tool, and clenched his hand once, starting a chain reaction through the air. The invisible signal, searching for its destination, raced towards a receiver that answered its silent call. A separate terminal caught the inbound signal and interpreted its intent in nanoseconds, automatically starting a timer for ninety seconds that then proceeded to count down towards an inevitable conclusion.

The terminal that had proceeded to interpret the Legionnaire's signal rested within an offshoot of a hallway within the Pax Informatio building, which the Legionnaire had frequented before Sarraf had entered the premises. Several kilograms of FOX-7, a crystalline/polymer mix and insensitive high explosive, had been placed in two barrels that were linked up with the terminal at the end, slaved to the countdown, which was rapidly progressing towards 0. The Legionnaire had specifically picked FOX-7 for a reason, as it was an easy explosive to transport and it was specifically designed to be utilized for controlled demolitions; in a city where there was a lot of potential for collateral damage, utilizing FOX-7 in this case would have far less political blowback, not that such an aspect was of the Legionnaire's concern. In this case, the Legionnaire was far more focused about the decisiveness and success that detonating such a powerful explosive would naturally entail—namely a directed explosive shock front and supersonic speed of the explosion, which would either incinerate or obliterate any evidence in its path rather than resorting to such crude options like a dirty bomb. The Legionnaire was pragmatic and knew when not to apply an elephantine approach to certain situations.

The Legionnaire had cleared the building well in time before the explosives detonated and he took a moment to position himself into a shadowy corner to watch the results of his handiwork, the snow having washed the blood from his boots as he had stomped across the thin road.

Pax Informatio was a firm that had been under scrutiny for years, the Legionnaire knew. They had been on the receiving end of many an inquiry to the point where many people believed that the firm was at the center of dozens of separate conspiracy theories. The eventual destruction of Pax Informatio would only invite more perusal and speculation, and the authorities would be distracted by any particular motive that would have warranted the outright destruction of Pax Informatio's headquarters. Blowing the place up may have seemed like a stupid and blindingly obvious offensive maneuver on his and therefore Chimera's part, but the Legionnaire had already realized that there were many more enemies on Pax Informatio's list that would have wanted to see this place burn well before Chimera.

It would be a distraction like no other, the Legionnaire silently reveled. Like lighting a decoy fire to enable Chimera to creep away under the cover of darkness.

No rules this time. Just results.

 _Ah, to be let off the leash_ , the Legionnaire thought.

And at exactly thirty-seven minutes past five in the morning, the detonators to the FOX-7 barrels ignited and blew, sending a shockwave of fire and noise rippling out of the windows of the building, ripping the roof off, and causing smoke and debris to belch into the air. All of the windows in a half-mile radius flexed and shattered from the force of the explosion, causing glass to rain down upon the streets in a deadly hail. Snow shook from the ground as heavy vibrations rumbled through the earth, an event not unlike a moderately severe earthquake.

But the flame quickly withdrew as quickly as it had expanded, leaving only a column of smoke and curtains of dust to obscure the Parisian air.

As sirens in the city began to wail in response to the attack and as the fire hissed, crackled, and snapped within the obliterated remains of the building, the Legionnaire slunk into the alley, the glow from his optics the final light the frigid morning would have to witness.

* * *

 _Omega_

Shepard spent the whole trek back to his ship in stoic silence, unnerved from the events of what had occurred over the past few minutes. He could not get the images of that trussed up man, drenched in his own blood, out of his head. Just thinking of that device peeling the skin away from that prisoner's body was making him queasy all over again.

He had seen people in pain before. It was all part of his profession, being a soldier. But never had he ever resorted to such brutality in his life. Hurting people for pleasure. It was a foreign source of enjoyment, one that he would never understand. Shepard could shoot a person from a mile away with a sniper rifle, but he knew that he would not have the heart to willingly dispense gradual pain just to get his rocks off. That required a completely different mindset.

Thankfully, once he was clear of this wretched place, perhaps his bleak thoughts would also beat a similar retreat. What he did know was that there was still someone in this galaxy that he could look upon and realize some semblance of hope. He knew he could still find optimism, even after all these years.

That was whom he was headed to right now.

Darkly, Shepard shouldered his way past the patrons of Afterlife once he had exited from the maze of Aria's hideout, shuffled through the fire-branded hallway, and out into the stuffy, silty air of Omega proper. The docks were only a short walk away, which was good for Shepard as he particularly wanted to get out of here now that he had gotten what he had come here in the first place for.

Fortunately, Shepard managed to traverse his way through Omega without getting accosted anymore. The sack with the medicine he needed jostled against his back, the strap tugging at his shoulder. Shepard inhaled through his nostrils, almost coughing as a fair amount of dust tickled his sinuses. He cursed as he rubbed at his nose—he really should have brought a rebreather mask with him.

The ship was mere meters away, ready for him to hit the engines and get the hell out of here. Not a moment too soon, in Shepard's opinion. The airlock door slid open once his omni-tool got within proximity to the sensor, allowing him to enter unimpeded.

"I'm back," he said aloud, his voice raspy and congested. Warily, he perked his ears, trying to discern any noise from inside the ship. "Roahn?"

Silence greeted him. Shepard frowned. Was Roahn still disappointed in him? He fought to contain his sigh. How was he ever going to live up to that girl's expectations? There was still so much that he had to learn. He just wished she could see that he was trying so very hard.

Because he was. Damn it, he _was_.

"Roahn?" he asked again as he slowly made his way over to his daughter's room, his breath bated.

But when he turned the corner, there was no one inside. No one else was in the ship.

" _Roahn?!"_

* * *

 **A/N: If the length of this chapter is rather staggering to you, you're not crazy. I thought I'd be churning out a 15k word chapter, taking into account previous postings, but it turns out that none of the stuff in this chapter could be cut out and placed elsewhere, so it all just happened to funnel here. Fun fact: this is now the longest chapter, at 20k+ words, that I've ever written. But hey, you guys get more content out of chapters like this, and isn't that just better than receiving a paltry 5k word update?**

 **I really do feel that I have to keep showing my appreciation for the level of support you guys have been giving this story. Believe me, I couldn't be happier at the reception that _Cenotaph_ has been receiving thus far, and I'm simply chuffed that you're enjoying it so much. To that point, I'd really like to know what exactly about _Cenotaph_ is compelling for you, be it the overall plot, characters, or what not. And in the spirit of constructive criticism, if there's anything you think that needs to be worked on in this story, let me know! If you point something out to me that makes a lot of sense, I'm only too happy to oblige.**

 **But now for some bad news, and don't worry, it's not what you might think. In a week and half, I will be going on vacation for a week, and that means that I won't be able to write for that span of time. Before you ask, no, I do not have the mental capacity to write while I'm on vacation (I get too distracted), so no progress on this story will be made at all during that time. I might or might not have another chapter posted before I leave, but in the event that I don't, I just want to let you guys know that I haven't been killed or kidnapped.**

 **Yay for happy thoughts.**

 **Playlist :**

 **Arrival on Omega: "Disc Wars" by Daft Punk from the film _Tron: Legacy_**

 **Roahn's Awe/Horror: "Grace Omega" by Hajime Mizoguchi from the film _Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade_**

 **Afterlife (Source Music): "PETROL" by Orbital as featured in the film _Pi_**

 **Torture Chamber: "Anvil (Remix)" by Sean Murray from the game _Call of Duty: Black Ops_**

 **Destruction of Pax Informatio: "Distance" by Lorn from the video game _Killzone: Shadowfall_**


	12. Chapter 12: Allies, New and Old

" _Broken promises are something of a given in our line of work, Mr. Koenig. Sadly, it's something that we have to get used to very quickly around here. That being said, this is not the first time that Chimera has been accused of improperly allocating funds before, is it not? Special hearings in 2193 and 2194 have made that all too apparent, I believe."_  
Sen. Dewar, UNAS

" _Speaking from the experience, I have no choice to agree with the fact that Chimera has been subject to a couple investigations in the past-mostly stemming from occasions involving rogue elements that could not have been foreseen beforehand."  
_ Erich Koenig, CEO – Chimera

" _Rogue elements, you say? Funny, because some of these instances sound like they could have been preventable had there been some sort of executive oversight in place. Many organizations have been down this same road before, Mr. Koenig, and all have made the same mistakes like Chimera has made. Five years ago, for example, you were awarded a contract by the Systems Alliance to collaborate on a new defense project alongside the military. You had a three year window and a five-billion credit influx at your disposal. Artificial intelligence technology for mobile turrets, if I recall, although the proper designation for what the military was looking for was more in line with a virtual intelligence for remote combat, essentially a stripped down AI to comply with the laws laid down by the Council. But after your three years were up, no progress had been made on the project and all the cash had been spent. An unfortunate ending to this ordeal. Is this to your recollection as well, Mr. Koenig?"  
_ Sen. Dewar, UNAS

" _It is, but if I also recall, we cooperated extensively with the prosecutor assigned to investigate this case. If we're remembering the same incident, the perpetrator for the misallocation of these funds was discovered relatively quickly. Also, we never rose to the defense of the man in charge of embezzling the military's funds—hell, we went so far as to testify against him."  
_ Erich Koenig, CEO – Chimera

" _And I suppose your cooperation is why the Alliance still places you highly on its list of contractors? The hand once bitten…?"_  
Sen. Dewar, UNAS

" _In_ my _line of work, senator, transparency with our clients is considered a virtue. If other people hold different perceptions, then that is not really my business."  
_ Erich Koenig, CEO – Chimera

" _The irony."  
_ Sen. Dewar, UNAS

* * *

 _Omega_

A hair's breadth.

That was how far Shepard was from completely losing his mind right now, but not from sheer anger.

No, from sheer terror.

A vacuum throbbed in his ears, a distinct void of silence when noise should have taken its place. Twin lumps grew within his throat. His very vision began to quiver as his skin became damp with perspiration. Shepard could physically feel the panic began to bubble up from the pit of his stomach, bringing a sour taste to his mouth and causing him to nearly double over with pain. If he could taste the color yellow, it would be subsiding into every pore of his tongue, infecting him with a sour note and causing all the saliva in his mouth to evaporate. His clothes felt like they were constricting him. His mind swam in a dark sea of confusion as he thrashed about in its wake, helpless in the face of the tides.

All because his daughter was no longer on board the ship.

Her very presence-in which her corporeal form should have resided right _here_ -failed to exist.

" _Roahn!_ " he called again as he embarked on searching through the interior of the craft for a third time.

Compartments clattered carelessly as Shepard took to upending every corner of the ship as his arms pinwheeled in desperation. Not a single nook or cranny went untouched during Shepard's crusade to discover where Roahn was potentially hiding. _If_ she was hiding. Every room, even the damned bridge, was thoroughly searched as Shepard ventured high and low to locate his daughter. But no matter what, despite the meticulous and expansive effort Shepard brought, he could not find her.

Roahn was gone.

Trying so very hard not to panic, Shepard stood in the middle of the craft, near the open airlock door, and frantically rubbed at his scalp with his hands. How? How could that girl vanish? He had locked her in here, didn't he? There should have been no chance that she could have simply wandered off. Shepard ran through his last words to the girl right before he left. He remembered that he had told Roahn that he would have been back within an hour, which he very well had succeeded in doing (per his chronometer, it had been fifty-five minutes since he had last made that declaration), and that he had strictly forbade her from leaving the premises of the ship.

A new thought then came to him, one that he dreaded even imagining in the first place. What if Roahn had not left here of her own volition? What if… someone had _taken_ her? Omega was an empty pit. This forsaken station was where people came to lose themselves. Lose them to drugs, to the gangs, to life itself, Omega was the opposite of forgiveness personified. Only the worst called this place a safe harbor. The very thought that someone from these shores could have laid their hands on his daughter...

But what if Omega was not the cause?

Could _Chimera_ somehow be behind this?

"No, no," Shepard winced and, with a wave of his hand, tried to physically fan away the thought. But it was too late; the idea had already taken hold and had sunk its claws into the black matter of Shepard's brain. No amount of force could tear it away now without Shepard being torn as well.

Shepard's hands curled in response to the dark concept so hard that he could have crushed steel. The bones in his knuckles popped and groaned in response to the stress. Even barely imagining someone harming his daughter would normally be enough to send him into a rage, but Shepard was scarcely able to contain himself now, as he was nearly bouncing off the walls in such a savage anger. If he kept this up-feeding his own fear and rage-Shepard would be liable to literally destroy the interior of his ship in his despair. Even after the perspective that he had been granted after his meeting with Aria, Shepard knew that he would know an enduring fury so precise towards anyone who threatened to hurt his family, that he would strike back so savagely upon those that oppressed him. The fate of those troopers that Aria had captured would seem like a luxury compared to what Shepard could conjure in his head: a whirlwind of a most violent conflagration of force and destruction ever contained in a solitary shell such as Shepard.

He would let rage infect him. He would make sure every fiber of his being knew his searing and macabre will.

If the persona of the Commander had to reveal himself, this would be the time to do so.

It was just… Omega was the worst place in the galaxy to find themselves disoriented within. If _Shepard_ did not feel safe or secure traversing some of the districts on Omega, how would someone less experienced possibly feel? A girl as young as Roahn… nowhere was safe upon this hellhole. That girl could not even comprehend the sick things people would do to young children on board these wayward stations. Shepard bemoaned his luck and cursed his stupidity. How could he have let his own daughter run off like that? Had he damned her to a life worse than death by leaving her behind, out of his sight?

Shepard fell to his knees, nearly heaving, as he tried not to think about Roahn locked up in a cage somewhere, starving and afraid. "Animals…" he murmured. "Fucking animals."

He should never have brought her here. No, he should not have been anywhere near Omega. _Oh god_ , Shepard keened to himself. _What have I done? Tali… Tali, what did I do?_

But before he could let loose the scream that embodied the sum total of his despair, and before he could dash on out of the ship in a frenzied effort to find his daughter, guns blazing, Shepard's introspection was interrupted by the quick series of pitter-pattering sounds: small boots upon a metal floor. They quickly increased in tempo and in volume.

Someone was approaching his ship.

Could it be…?

Like a bolt from the blue, the diminutive form of Shepard's daughter suddenly burst into frame through the airlock door, the warm light of Omega diffusing in and giving Roahn a glowing outline. She was panting, out of breath, and the look in her eyes was somewhat guilty which softened a little when she saw her father upon his knees, his own mournful look still frozen upon his face.

Her soft eyes speared through the diffuse blue of her visor and met her father's similarly icey ones. Differing species finding familiarity through a singular look, transcending physical bonds to make eternal connections. Brain synapses fired eagerly in the both of them as father and daughter found their own gazes relaxing at the same time.

Not realizing the hurt she had put her father through and more thinking that instead she had been caught in the act from mounting her impromptu exploration, Roahn hung her head shamefully as she stepped into the gap, back onto the ship, earnestly contrite.

"Dad…" she began as she stopped just short of where Shepard was kneeling, trying to find the words to properly explain so that her father would not be as mad as possible. "I…"

Roahn was cut off as Shepard immediately pulled her in for an enormous hug.

Both father and daughter simultaneously gasped in a wonderful combination of astonishment, relief, and, to their surprise, _wholeness_. Shepard's arms were tight around Roahn, but not tight enough to squeeze the air from her lungs. He held his daughter's body close to him, as an affirmation that she was here, in this room, with him. A long, gradual sigh escaped his mouth, springing up bare tears from his eyes that were swiftly blinked away, known only to him. Still on his knees, Shepard gently rested his forehead upon Roahn's shoulder, the blood quickly draining from his head and leaving him dizzy as his previous franticness was alleviated all at once in an awesome wave.

What Shepard would not realize at first, perhaps for a long time, was that his reaction, upon seeing Roahn, would be pivotal to Roahn for the rest of her life. It would be one of those moments that would resonate long after the action had concluded, even if the action itself was only seconds long.

It was the hug. A complete, honest, and spontaneous gesture. Unique amongst a dreary sea of torpidity. Roahn had no idea how to react, what to say, or how to think as her father hugged her. It was just all… _him_. Simply having Shepard surround her in a protective embrace and to hear his own breathing slow in his solace was almost unreal to her. Roahn could not even recall the last time that Shepard had hugged her. Before her mother had died, at the very least. If had done it prior, it had never been so fierce, so genuine.

As flummoxed as Roahn was, she managed to retain a shred of wherewithal to be able to shakily return her father's hug, unexpectedly finding herself settling into the warm embrace. With a tiny murmur, Roahn closed her eyes, her fluttering breathing smoothing out, now that she was relaxing in the face of her father's care.

 _I really must have worried him_ , she thought with a pang of remorse.

"My god, Roahn," Shepard finally breathed as he separated from Roahn, while keeping his hands tightly clasped upon the girl's shoulders. "Don't scare me like that ever again. What were you _thinking_ , running off like that? I told you to stay _here_ , damn it. I told you to stay…"

Shepard's voice ran off as he had expended all his air—momentarily forgetting how to breathe.

Roahn felt like she had been run through, not because she had betrayed her father's trust, but for the first time, she could actually _see_ the effects of what she had done imprinted upon her father's face. Just by looking into his eyes Roahn was able to see a towering swell of relief crash down upon him, washing away the fear and terror that had clumped up there. Real ramifications to her actions—she had finally tested her boundaries to the absolute breaking point.

It certainly explained why Shepard was near tears instead of completely berating her. Instead of the anger that she had expected, she only found sorrow and panic, clinging to him tightly long after the fact-salt clustering to the rocks after the tide had deposited them there. In the face of his family's safety, Shepard's rage meant nothing.

In Shepard's eyes, Roahn _was_ that tide.

Now Roahn found out that she really did have the potential to hurt her father after all these years. To cut him down to nothing by exposing his biggest fear, for she occupied a large place in his heart. It had been said to her many a time, but now… today would only confirm that Shepard truly did cherish her. After today, Roahn vowed that she would never deliberately try to hurt her father again.

"I'm…" Roahn managed, her voice also shaky as the weight of her betrayal began to take her down, "I'm sorry, dad. I tried… I tried to get back quickly. I didn't mean to… to cause you to worry."

Now Roahn was shaking from her nerves. It was always a humbling experience when she was the one having to give an apology—as anyone would be able to attest—and Roahn was trying very hard to make her words be as sincere as possible, only because she was indeed contrite. She was not going to mention the turns she had encountered whilst she had been roaming around Omega. She knew her father well enough to not give him too much to worry about. Roahn was well aware that she had practically given him a heart attack today—no need for there to be another.

She felt tinier than she had ever felt before. This was different. When her father had been angry at her, she could utilize his hot rage to feed her own indigence. But Shepard was now a vortex, his face crestfallen, consuming any shred of defiance left within her.

The guilt nearly caused Roahn to start to sob, now that she realized just how badly she had caused her father to panic.

Shepard briefly dipped his head and let out another sigh. "I thought that I had lost you, Roahn."

"I know," Roahn nodded, meek.

Shepard's hands came around to the sides of Roahn's helmeted head, gently keeping her in place and forcing her to look straight at him.

"Do you understand _now_ why I didn't want you running off? Do you at least know why I was so scared?"

Shepard had to restrain himself from trying to hammer home all the ways that Roahn could have been hurt on Omega. As mature as she was for her age, she was better off not hearing such horrible things.

Under her mask, Roahn bit her lip. Would her father have ever admitted that he was scared in the past? This was a man who stared down _Reapers_ and had won, who had gone toe-to-toe with krogan battlemasters and had come out without a scratch. It was hard to imagine that Shepard had been putting on an impressive façade all this time, with all the cracks now beginning to show.

Unless… the cracks were all because of _her_.

"I… I do," Roahn answered. "I'll never do it again, dad. Really. I swear. I truly promise you."

Shepard noticed that Roahn was quivering-from guilt or fear, perhaps? The poor girl was terrified of the ramifications of her transgression. But Shepard found that his daughter's words were acceptable and that she understood the seriousness of actions. Shepard then gave a solemn nod and briefly looked away, forlorn but recovering. "Did you…" he started, not trying to pile on any more remorse, "did you get lost trying to find your way back to the ship? Was that why you took so long?"

Roahn bobbed her head in affirmation. "Uh… yeah. I did."

"You didn't get into any trouble?"

"Not…" Roahn took a careful glance behind her. "Not exactly. But… but I did get help in the end."

Shepard gave a slow blink. "Help? What do you mean?"

Roahn, upon being asked to elaborate, began to perk up, her eyes widening. "Dad, I… it's... I don't know how… it's incredible… you just won't believe it!"

"Believe what?" Shepard tilted his head, clenching his eyes shut to try to make sense of his daughter's babbling. "What are you trying to tell me, Roahn?"

"I… I…" Roahn was fanning her hands, clearly beside herself. For good reason—it was only because she had been getting abashed by her father (rightfully so) that she had completely forgotten to mention a new development that had just reared its head at the tail end of Roahn's Omega expedition. "D-Dad… I was lost in the marketplace… didn't know where to go… lost my bearings… but someone _found_ me… a-and… and I was led back here by… by…"

"By _whom?_ " Shepard pressed, nearly exasperated.

"By _me_. Who else?" A new voice swerved from around the corner.

Shepard turned just in time to spot a newcomer enter the ship from the direction of the airlock. This new arrival ducked their head to prevent from banging themselves upon the low access point, only straightening up to their full height when they had made it inside. They were taller than Shepard by a few solid inches and this person's body structure was not exactly the same as a human's: thin waist, arced shins, and dry, mottled skin. A curve of elongated cartilage, a crest, sheared away from this man's skull out to at least a foot behind him—typical of the species. A jaw filled with sharp spikes for teeth glimmered, partially covered by a pair of inflexible mandibles, which were not at all inherently familiar to humans, much less quarians.

All the same, Shepard recognized this man well before the neurons in his brain confirmed what his eyes were inexplicably seeing.

The biggest grin Shepard had made in years immediately spread across his face as he rose to greet his guest.

"I don't believe it," he could only say right before he became locked in a brotherly embrace with the other man, both of their arms clasping the other with a fierce smack followed by grunting as they pulled themselves into a clearly practiced lock. "You son of a bitch! How the… how did you _find_ us?"

"How? Shepard, I'm disappointed. You of all people should know to never underestimate _me_."

The overhead light fell across the man's face, illuminating the glimmer of mirth that Garrus Vakarian had in his eyes at this moment. The turian could not physically smile, but the sheer look that Garrus was projecting, coupled with the knowing tilt of his head, indicated that the man was just as beside himself as Shepard was in this very moment.

"Garrus Vakarian. All this way, I don't—"

Shepard could not stop smiling and brought the turian in for another bear hug, being unable to finish the rest of his sentence. The turian similarly obliged, each one slapping the other on the back so hard that it sounded to Roahn like such blows should hurt quite a bit. But both men were still smiling long after they had parted, all equally excited to be in the same room once more.

It was no secret that, other than Tali, Garrus Vakarian had become Shepard's closest friend through the trials and tribulations that they had endured together. The turian had stood at Shepard's side from nearly the beginning of their adventures, thick and thin, watching each other's backs the whole way. He was a warrior, true at heart, that always claimed to be a "bad turian" due to his tendency to power through instances of bureaucracy (obedience and being subservient were traits that turians tended to lionize, which were just the very ideals that Garrus had exhibited no patience for), yet Shepard had said all this time that Garrus was one of the best _people_ he had ever met. While Shepard had connected with Garrus' moral compass and determination to do the right thing, what Shepard valued most of all in Garrus was his staunch loyalty and genuine desire to be a good person that they had become fast friends since the time they had known each other. Many times, having a friend was all Shepard had needed in the most trying of times, and Shepard knew that, whenever his back was to the wall, he could always count on Garrus to be at his side until the end. That was a bond that not even time could weather down.

Garrus stood out from the crowd of turians for a couple of reasons, mostly due to the fact that he had a penchant for always wearing a tactical eyepiece over his left eye, a long piece of glass that glowed a vibrant indigo. Actually, he wore it so much that Shepard would not have been surprised to learn if Garrus went to _sleep_ with the damned thing still on his head. Garrus also had on a pattern of blue facepaint that was delicately applied to his mandibles and that continued on in a segmented line that ran underneath his eyes and across the bridge of his nose. But if those weren't the most distinguishing features, then it had to be that the right side of his face was all twisted and mangled in a maze of unceasing scars. That was a permanent reminder of a close call Garrus had sustained on Omega, of all places, when he had gotten a little too close to the business end of a rocket thrown by a Mantis gunship. Skin grafts and cybernetics had seen to the worst of the damage, but Garrus' face had been permanently disfigured from the attack. On the upside, regardless of how badly Garrus had been mangled in the past, he still retained a sense of humor about the whole ordeal, managing to see the best of things despite what should have been a pertinent and sobering memory.

Old habits apparently died hard for the turian, as Garrus was decked out in a light suit of armor, patterned with strong shades of storm-cloud gray coupled with a few vivid hues of ocean blue. A pistol hung at his hip and a sniper rifle had been slotted upon his back. Shepard could not figure out if Garrus was sticking to a routine he could not escape or if the turian was just being paranoid. Then again, Omega was not the sort of place to roam around without a weapon. He could sympathize with Garrus here, at the very least.

"The last time we were here together, _you_ were the one surprising _me_ ," Garrus chuckled in his light timbre, referring to the time when Shepard first reunited with him after his supposed death from the Collectors. "I figured it was about time that I repaid the favor."

"This is… unbelievable," Shepard ran his fingers through his head in awe. The man was still wide-eyed, like he was expecting Garrus to be a hallucination that could vanish at any second. "So many years it's been. But… dammit, it's _wonderful_ to see you, Garrus!" He gave the lanky turian a knock on the arm. "How the… how'd you even know to come here? Omega's not even close to Palaven and… I never told you that we were coming here!"

Garrus simply crossed his arms in amusement. "Didn't I just tell you not to underestimate me?" He let the question stand in the air for a bit before he finally shrugged. "You gave me the ID tag of your ship years ago, you fool. You wanted me to know wherever your ship might be, so that I could always find you in case things took a sudden turn, remember? And about a week ago, I opened my tracking app on a whim and, lo and behold, I saw that you had finally left Rannoch and that you were approaching this system. I was elated, as you could imagine. How else should I react? My friend was finally off the planet that he had exiled himself to! How could I not take such an opportunity? I figured this was my chance to see you and the family, and I promptly hailed a craft to get to you. And... well, I'm here now. What else is there to say?"

"Yeah, that explains it all right," Shepard admitted, truthfully having forgotten that he had given Garrus a secret backdoor to his whereabouts a long time ago. Amazing what kinds of stuff could be forgotten over the natural passage of time.

"So, how come you've left Rannoch? Are you finally done with that spot of trouble back on Earth?"

Shepard sheepishly rubbed the back of his head. "Not really. It's probably fair to say that things are worse than ever."

The turian gave a slow blink as his fragile gaze briefly crumbled away from Shepard's. "Ah, that makes sense. Especially considering the events of the past few days."

"What events?" Shepard's face blanked. "I haven't heard anything of the sort."

"I'll explain later," Garrus hastily deflected. "I'd rather you introduce me to _this_ one over here, even though we've just met." The turian then took a long step towards Roahn, who had been staring up at the man the entire time he had been talking. "Found her wandering alone in the crowds out there. Dangerous place for a girl to be walking. Figured that you were close by and that I should take her back until you returned."

Garrus then knelt towards Roahn, who had been silent while watching her father start to reminisce with the turian. Her breathing was subtly picking up again and her eyes were wide as she started to comprehend once more that she was in the presence of a person that she had been reading up on for quite a while. Just _looking_ at the legendary Garrus Vakarian made her heart feel like it was going into palpitations. The back of her neck felt cold and clammy. Her fingers ached.

"We've never been in the same room with each other, nor have we ever shared words," Garrus said to Roahn as he temporarily lifted the eyepiece off his face, slipping it into a side pocket, "but you look just like you do in the pictures that your parents sent me over the years. How you've grown. I could pick you out anywhere." A glimmer of mischief in his eyes. "Has your father talked about me much?"

"Not… not all _that_ much," Roahn managed, not missing the slightly crestfallen look Garrus gave. "B-But from what he's said about you… I'd know you from anyone."

"Your father's probably just waiting for the appropriate time to tell you all about me," Garrus looked up and momentarily locked eyes with Shepard before appraising Roahn again. "I know he may seem like an enigma, but… he does have his reasons. But your dad always has kept me appraised about you, did you know that? I'll never forget the day that you were born, Roahn. I was on the Citadel, at a late hour, and I had been pacing around my office for what seemed like the entire night, just waiting for a call. I was too excited to go to sleep, for all I knew, the big news could only have been seconds away. Then, all of a sudden, my omni-tool rang, and the first words out of your father's mouth were, ' _She's here, Garrus. A beautiful little girl._ ' He was so proud and we were all delighted to hear the news. That was probably the happiest I had ever seen your dad. Even more so than at his wedding."

Roahn gave a smile of her own behind her mask before it summarily cooled, finding it somewhat distant that she had to learn about this fact from a person other than her father. So much… there was still so much she did not know about her own family. She could only venture so far into the nebulous void before being forced to take alternate routes. What Garrus had provided was just another path to the center.

"I… I… I did not know that," Roahn could only say.

Garrus slightly stiffened, trying to quell his instinct to twitch his mandibles—a sign of agitation. _Shepard's been getting behind. How much does this girl have yet to learn?_

"I'm sure Shepard had a good explanation for not telling you about that," was the reply he came up with, even if it sounded lame in his head. The brief, searing glance he provided at Shepard conveyed a hefty dose of accusatory connotations as he tried to pierce the stone façade of the human's expression.

"I know. But he's been telling me a lot more lately." Roahn shot a look of her own towards her father, who, after looking away from Garrus' sad stare, simply made a placid expression of affirmation towards his daughter, indicating that Roahn was indeed speaking the truth regarding his newfound openness. "Besides, I know a lot about you already."

Garrus chuffed. "Really? Like what?"

"That you were—are—my parents' best friend, that you're supposed to be one of the foremost tactical geniuses in turian combat history, that you just might—but it's not proven—be a better shot than my dad—"

"Shepard, I'm smitten," Garrus gave the human a sly look, his mandibles edging out of the way to reveal a row of sharp teeth like spines.

Shepard just rolled his eyes while he tried to stifle a smirk.

"—that you were one of the most fearsome vigilantes on Omega, and that you're a special appointee to the Citadel Council now," Roahn finished, before she trudged her foot on the ground, suddenly shy. "I also have your action figure," she added somewhat in embarrassment.

 _Had_ , Roahn remembered. _I had the action figure. Probably melted into a lump of plastic somewhere in our home by now when it burned to the ground._

The mischievous twinkle in Garrus' eyes became noticeably brighter. "Did you hear?" he mockingly asked Shepard. "She has my action figure."

"I've heard," Shepard said evenly. "She's been a fan of yours since day one." When Roahn whirled to look upon her father, astonished that he managed to glean her interests, he gave a shrug in response. "What?" he asked sincerely. "I'm not so blind as to be clueless to what my daughter is interested in."

Garrus thoughtfully gave a pause in light of the parental revelation, only appraising Roahn once again once he was sure that the moment had passed. "It appears that I've put this off for too long. You see, I have been wanting to meet you, Roahn, for a very long time."

"You have?" the girl squeaked, reeling at the mere mention of her idol returning her intense adoration.

"Why not? You're the daughter of my two best friends. Anyone with any self-respect in my position would want to meet you. My history with your parents notwithstanding."

"Don't sell yourself short," Shepard interjected with a calm wave of his hand. "It wasn't your fault that we had to delay this meeting for so long."

"All the same," Garrus responded, his eyes burning brightly. "I should have come sooner. Damn what everyone else should think. I'm _years_ late to this!"

"And if you're just going to blame yourself for my actions, then we're just going to get nowhere. I told you the situation all those years ago and why you could not visit. Things have changed since then. Roahn and I," Shepard curtly nodded to his daughter, who was still gaping at the turian, "are in terrible danger now. More so than the usual empty threats that have been looming over my head this time. We've got hunters on our tail, sent by a corporation—a private military—called Chimera. They've been on us for a couple weeks now to try and apprehend me. Staying on Rannoch," he clapped a gentle hand on Roahn's shoulder, shaking her affectionately, "was not safe for the both of us."

Garrus narrowed his eyes, trying to drudge up additional information deep within his brain. "This in relation to that spat that you had with that senator about ten or twelve years ago?"

"The very same one, in fact. Raynor Larsen is his name and he's definitely the one pulling the strings here. He wants the same thing out of me that he did back then: to submit a testimony that would damage our allies so that he can enable the Alliance to wrest power away from the Council. And before you say anything," Shepard added as Garrus rose to his feet, all his attention focused on his friend, "the reason we didn't go to you first is that we didn't want to put you in any danger from Chimera."

"You know that I wouldn't have cared either way," the turian spread his arms as he adopted a pleading look.

"All the same, it wouldn't have been fair to lay that on you."

"I know. I'm just saying that it wouldn't have mattered in the end."

Shepard smiled. "Then you're a better man than I am."

Everyone in the party all then subconsciously started to make their way over to the kitchen table just a few feet away from where they were all congregated right now. Shepard took the booth, wincing as he lowered himself down, and Garrus gave a fragile look in the human's direction. Saying nothing, he instead slid out the chair across from Shepard, with Roahn immediately claiming the one next to the turian.

"I did mention before that we had something to discuss," Garrus said, his tone slightly halting as he minutely glanced at Roahn next to him. "But I'm not sure that I should say this in front of your daughter."

"Say what in front of me?" Roahn piped up, chipper as she ever could be. Clearly her proximity to Garrus had elevated her energy levels somewhat drastically.

Shepard took that information stoically and rubbed his thumb along his chin as he appraised Roahn carefully. He then gave a singular nod before leaning over the table and folding his hands together in a pensive maneuver.

"I've been trying to be more open with my daughter, Garrus. This really isn't something for her to hear?"

"Not sure," Garrus shrugged. "That's really not up to me, to be honest. But what I have to say… it's not going to be good."

Absorbing the notion that he might have to relapse back into his old ways, Shepard fortified his mental defenses by taking an unseen but deep breath, keeping his mouth hidden behind a hand. He then looked at Roahn, finding that she was giving him a silent plea back and as they locked eyes for a few seconds, Roahn gave a tiny tremble and pressed her back against the chair as she already realized what her father was about to say.

"Come on, dad, I—" she tried to say.

Shepard just shook his head, adamant. "Not this time, young lady. Garrus is right. We're going to need you to go to your room for a little bit."

"But—"

"No buts out of you," Shepard said just a bit more sternly. "I've had enough insubordination out of your for today. Consider this your punishment for sneaking out of the ship without my knowledge, at the very least. You know what you need to do. Chop, chop."

Roahn yanked her head around in a last ditch effort to seek clemency from anyone who might listen, but it was immediately apparent that she was not going to receive any support this time around. With a dejected sigh, Roahn hopped off the edge of her chair and made a show of moping over to her room in a languid state. To Shepard's unvoiced relief, Roahn did not make an even bigger show of relaying her disappointment, as she had managed to read the logic in the situation to realize that there were still moments of unfairness that she would still have to endure.

"We'll have some time to talk in a few minutes," Garrus called after the trudging Roahn. "Don't worry."

If that had managed to assuage Roahn some, neither Garrus nor Shepard could tell.

Once both men were certain that Roahn had closed the door, the two of them leaned in closer so that they could speak at a lower volume.

"How's she holding up?" Garrus asked as he folded his hands in front of him upon the table. "Roahn, I mean."

Shepard gave a shrug in reflex and took another instinctive glance towards the shut door where his daughter had vanished behind. "As well as any young girl could take this. Probably even better than I had hoped, to be honest."

"That's good. Someone her age, it would be a tragedy if she had her innocence robbed so soon."

Now Shepard rubbed at his jaw in agony, as if a sudden ache had cropped up there. "It will still be sooner than I would have liked. That girl deserved better. She deserved a real life, Garrus. That's what all this has been about since the beginning: giving Roahn a life. A house, a family, she should have had all these things. Tali and I created so much for her so that she would never be left wanting."

"And yet," the turian sighed, "you can't stop it from happening, can you?"

"Children should not have to grow up so fast. At their age, they think that adults have everything figured out. They always find out that the truth is nothing but a fabrication. Us adults, we're just pretending that we have everything under control. They think we know what we're doing, but we're just flying by the seat of our pants."

Garrus nodded in agreement, laboriously blinking to relay to Shepard that he understood. Garrus had no kids of his own, but he still understood the underlying notion that age did not necessarily guarantee that he should hold the answers to the universe in his head. Uncertainty had been rife within him for so long that Garrus had long relished the day where he would simply have to cease his worries and let life gently carry him away like driftwood upon a languid river.

But, knowing life, that river would undoubtedly be filled with rapids before calm could wash over the scene.

"So," Shepard rubbed his hands together, "what have I missed in the last couple of weeks?"

Now or never. Garrus made sure to deeply inhale.

"Hackett's dead," Garrus said bluntly, his face made of diamond.

"What?" Shepard was thrown, nearly not believing it were it not for the fact that the turian was completely serious. "When?"

"A few days ago. Local police on Earth came across his body in the woods several miles from the capitol. He had been… pulled from his transport, along with his military escort, and executed right along the side of road."

Shepard said nothing for quite a while as he instead buried his face in a hand, his fingers rubbing at his eyes so hard as if he just wanted to smear away this veneer he had upon his life, to try and tear away the so-called curtain that was in between him and the perfect world he had always envisioned for himself.

But reality would always linger in his mind. Cold, dreary reality.

"Hackett," Shepard muttered clumsily before he was unexpectedly wracked with a cough. "Shit."

 _I had just talked to the man a week ago! We had been conversing together like… like old times! And now… he's gone? Murdered? It doesn't seem possible._

"Was…" Shepard cleared his throat. "Was it Chimera?"

Garrus could only managed a strangled face, the kind of expression that emphasized a heavy guilt due to a lack of answers.

"From what I heard, no one has any idea," the turian sighed. "No leads, no evidence. Just bodies."

"It has to be Chimera. Has to be."

"I'm not arguing with you there, Shepard. You and I both know that Chimera's been a rogue organization since the beginning. And now that you're saying that they've sent people after you… well, it all adds up, doesn't it?"

"Hmm…" Shepard simply mused as he rubbed his hands together again frantically, both of which had suddenly ran cold, like the blood had been limited in flowing to those areas.

Garrus observed Shepard's vacant expression as well as his hunched body posture, trying so very hard not to expectantly tap his fingers upon the table separating the two of them.

"How have _you_ been feeling?" Garrus asked as he tried to make a gesture without trying to vocalize his meaning, not wanting to be too intrusive. "Hanging in there, I hope?"

Shepard suppressed a laugh. "I look that bad, eh?"

Garrus had to stop for a bit to consider his next words. Truth be told, the human had looked better in the past. The sickly gray hair of Shepard's beard and head also did the man no favors. He looked to be fifty years older than he already was. Not to mention that Garrus could see that Shepard's hands were shaking a bit and that the human was holding his hands tightly, as if to suppress a chronic pain that resided there.

"Still hurting?"

"It comes and goes," Shepard considered as he flexed his fingers. "Not really much I can do about it at this point. The meds help with the pain, but it always comes back."

"Have you been seeing anyone lately? A doctor, I mean."

Shepard raised an eyebrow as the edges of his lips curled ever so slightly upward. "On Rannoch? Not many professionals there that would know what to do with a human. The last guy who looked at me was from a passing Alliance caravan. And that was years ago."

Garrus' mandibles finally gave a singular twitch, a tic that Shepard definitely noticed. It was always a sign that a turian was undergoing extreme emotion when their mandibles were flaring. Shepard had interpreted it as a sign that, whenever that was happening, turians were reining in emotions that might otherwise be too explosive to properly voice, or that they simply signified a state of mind that was too complex for words to even describe.

"You mean to say that you haven't been to a doctor in years? Spirits, Shepard… in your condition—,"

"What do you suggest I do about it _now?_ " Shepard finally snapped as he slammed his hand down upon the table, causing a lone mug perched near the edge to jump up a couple inches. "Not like there's a clinic on Omega I can waltz on over to anymore. This is just something that I have to deal with, one step at a time." He raised a hand for emphasis, shaking it so that Garrus could see the gnarled knuckles, the calluses on his palm.

Shepard then leaned over and undid the zip end of the rucksack he had brought on board the ship, causing a large amount of plastic-encased injectors to tumble onto the table. Vials of yellow liquid swirled around their tiny containers, the medical labels facing the ceiling.

Garrus raised his hands in the universal expression of surrender after taking in the sight of Shepard's medication. "I'm not trying to pester you, Shepard. I'd never try and force you to do something against your will. But from where I'm sitting, and knowing what you're going through, I have an obligation to help you and that girl in the other room however I can. And if that extends to me having to push you to see a doctor, then that's what I'm going to do."

"What," Shepard smirked nastily, "are you saying you know a guy on Omega who can properly look at me?"

"Even better. I know a guy on the Citadel. Does surgery on limbs, mostly, but is well versed in other areas. Fixed up an old war wound on my knee years ago, actually. Top notch guy. I guarantee he'd take a good look at you."

"The Citadel?" Shepard laughed, a roughened rasp. "Garrus, that's not exactly a straight shot from here—"

"You've got a quantum entanglement communicator set up over there," Garrus jerked his thumb to the little cranny of the kitchen where a holographic console was nestled over there. "And I see you have a Midas medical suite. Give him a vidcall and link him up to your station. He'll perform the checkup from the other side of the galaxy. People do these off-site appointments all the time. It's not that abnormal anymore. Just give it a shot, for me. I promise it'll be quick and painless."

Shepard's eyelids tapered down to fine slits, studying Garrus in apprehension. There were still a few topics that Shepard did not like to broach in open conversation, even with a friend as close as Garrus. He felt that there was no point to some of these things except to reiterate the obvious in his mind. But then he considered why Garrus was requesting this of him. Garrus was just someone who was concerned for him, who wanted to make sure that his friend was all right. It was probably the least he felt he could do for someone whom he had not even laid eyes on in god knows how long. If Shepard did this, maybe Garrus could be allotted some peace of mind, giving him a firm reason to stop worrying about his friend so much. If Garrus could be put at ease, then that would be one less thing that Shepard would have to concentrate on.

Garrus had not been there when Tali had died and being at such a distance when that had happened had torn the man up for a month. Shepard knew that the turian would willingly lose limbs than have to undergo such a separation from his best friend again. He would not stand idly by, not when he had them all here right now. After all, it was what Tali would have wanted of Garrus—to support her husband wherever and however possible. Garrus did not want his idleness to linger on his conscience anymore.

Such a simple request. It would be a shame to refuse.

"Fine," Shepard finally muttered as he moved to stand from the booth. "This doctor better be damn good, though."

* * *

The QEC link with the Midas medical suite took some time to set up, which had been a full fifteen minutes of two grown men trying in vain to decipher simple programming instructions obtained over the extranet. But by sheer will, and perhaps a bit of luck, Shepard and Garrus had finally gotten everything in order, with the hologram crystals primed and warmed, ready to project the image of the person they were about to communicate with.

"All right," Garrus announced as Shepard seated himself into the chair in front of the console. "Go ahead and initiate the call. I've already informed the good doctor that he's about to look after someone of importance."

"Oh, joy," Shepard responded tonelessly, but he did as he was told and a loading bar popped up on the screen of the console, indicating the amount of progress towards connecting the two callers.

Half a minute later and a green check mark appeared on the screen and a tone sounded, indicating a good connection. The overhead crystals brightened and thick, tangible static started to fizzle right over the projector dais, reacting and coalescing into a humanoid form, the resolution rapidly clearing up as the call itself continued on, bringing this person's features into light.

The doctor was a human male, about Shepard's height thereabouts, with a full head of hair, colored brown, and a thick beard that was closely cropped to the man's face to complete the entire picture. Broad-shouldered, in decent shape, and appeared to be in his late thirties. The man's eyes were a piercing blue, discernable even through the medium of the hologram, and his face was nicked by slight scars that interrupted his otherwise smooth pallor. Just above the collar of his shirt, Shepard could see a long, marbled white line of scar tissue mar the man's neck on the left side—an unusual accoutrement that Shepard had not been expecting. Instead of the usual jumpsuit medical personnel usually wore, this man was wearing a baggier alternative, adorned with the same professional markings, but there was a distinct casual air about this person, one that was quite unlike the unconscious snobbiness that most doctors exuded. There was something to this man, Shepard already decided, that was different. That seemed… familiar. Almost like looking into a mirror.

He decided to put that feeling aside for now, for Garrus was already beginning the conversation.

"Thanks for calling in, doc," Garrus said to the hologram before he gave a brief pause. "You're on a secure channel, right?"

The image of the human crossed his arms irritably. " _Hello yourself, Vakarian. What do you take me for? An amateur?_ " Deep voice. Weathered from experience. " _I do pride myself on my ability to be discreet, you know._ "

"Hey, I'm just making sure. I kind of have a special request for you right now."

" _I figured. When I received a message from you, of all people, telling me to drop everything and call in, intimating that this was a matter of the utmost importance, it would be fair to say that I would certainly comply for a person of your stature_. _So, let's hear it. What do you have in store for today? Your knee acting up again_?"

Garrus gave an abrupt cough. "No, actually, my knee's not bothering me. Everything's acting the way it should. I just want you to take a look at… a friend of mine. You see… it should be clear in a moment why I made this request."

The doctor then shifted his view to appraise Shepard more closely. The bearded man squinted his eyes, leaning in further for affirmation. When the doctor's eyes widened slightly, Shepard realized that this man had figured out who he was, despite his weathered appearance. That was certainly quick of him.

" _Ah_ ," the doctor merely said. " _No wonder you wanted to keep this on the down low_."

"Correct. Picture now getting clearer?"

" _Hey_ ," the man shrugged, " _if_ _you want me to keep quiet about this, I can keep quiet. Mum's the word_."

Shepard shifted his weight around on his feet. "Garrus, just who the hell _is_ this guy?"

Garrus made a pained face. "I probably should have done the introductions at the start, eh? Sorry about that. A little awkward, now. So, Shepard, this is Doctor Samuel McLeod. Senior staff at Huerta Hospital. Doc, this is—,"

" _Commander John Shepard_ ," the doctor finished for him. " _I know, Vakarian. I know. And you'd have to be living under the biggest rock in the galaxy to not know who this man is. Funny, though. I thought he was supposed to be living on Rannoch. It's what the feeds all say these days_."

"Remember what I said about keeping quiet?" Garrus reminded the man.

" _If you think I'm going to sell out two of the galaxy's biggest heroes, you can certainly call someone else to do the damn checkup_ ," the doctor snapped. Shepard had to smile at the brief indignation, liking this man's blunt and forward style. " _I'm not going to become the biggest pariah ever known just to get my name in the tabloids. I've had enough adventures in my life as it is_." Suddenly pleasant, the doctor then shifted his attention to Shepard, giving his hair a brief brush with his hand as he reflexively took a breath. " _You'll have to excuse me. Vakarian has always brought out my sarcastic side whenever I've had to tend to him. My wife keeps on telling me that I need to work on my attitude._ "

"Garrus has always had a certain way with doctors," Shepard reasoned. "And he's quite protective of his friends, as you've no doubt noticed."

The doctor gave a short, rasping laugh. " _Believe me, I just might know more about that than you might realize. But enough beating around the bush. You can call me Sam, or Doc, like Vakarian does. Would you rather I call you Shepard, or Commander, or…?"_

"Just 'Shepard' is fine. We'll keep things simple that way."

Sam gave a nod, his image flickering to the motion. " _Fair enough. I… uh… suppose you're wondering why Vakarian picked me to be your examiner_."

"Other than the fact that you can keep a secret?" Shepard responded as he settled into the chair. "He apparently believes that you know your stuff. What's your specialization?"

" _Arthroscopic surgery, but I do double as a physician occasionally when the workload over here gets a little frantic_. _Am I correct in assuming that you're only going along with a checkup just because Vakarian here is pressuring you into one?_ "

"Pretty much," Shepard said drolly, not missing the opportunity to shoot the turian a playfully accusatory glance.

" _Figured as much,_ " Sam said. " _Well, no sense in waiting any longer. I'm just going to open up my console here and we can get started. Hmm… let's see… ah, it looks like you've already connected a Midas suite on your ship to our server. How hard was that for you guys?_ "

"Very," Shepard and Garrus responded at the same time.

Sam's grin broadened, all teeth, as he apparently set to work adjusting some parameters on his end. " _And they say that technology makes everything easier these days. So, Shepard, are you sitting down in the chair right now?_ "

"Yeah."

" _Excellent. Now, place your hands on the armrests and… try to hold still."_

Shepard complied and at the very moment he laid his hands upon the circular portions of the armrests, the contacts glowed green, then blue. A second later, two curved scanners swung up into view from underneath the chair, one for each armrest, and positioned themselves over Shepard's wrists, looking a lot like oversized cuffs. Little flashing beams strobed out from the laser scanners, positioned on the underside, dazzling Shepard's skin in a bath of glittering illumination.

The cuffs whirred and then drew closer to Shepard's exposed wrists, conforming to his body. Then, barely discernable, a needle as thin as a strand from a spider's web shot straight down from the scanner and pierced Shepard's skin just below where his wrist connected to his hand. Shepard felt the barest of pinches and his fingers twanged reflexively, but other than that, there was no pain. The needle itself was hardly an intruder—its entrance very well could have been a slight itch upon his skin.

There was also no discomfort as the needle sucked up a few drops of precious blood, withdrawing after it had taken a miniscule amount from Shepard's body. A fat dropper then also descended while the syringe was in the middle of ascending, applying one tiny droplet of medi-gel right where the needle had impacted upon Shepard's body, closing the already microscopic site up completely. Shepard felt his skin start to heat up dramatically from where the medi-gel smeared over him, but then the sensation quickly cooled as if an arctic blast had unexpectedly wafted against him.

In less than ten seconds, he felt nothing else.

" _All done_ ," Sam's hologram announced, his attention glued to a screen off-camera. " _You can move your wrists whenever you want_. _However, I'd advise you to stay in the chair. Passive scanners are still going and I'd like to take a closer look at things, just in case_."

Shepard glanced up at saw a white plastic halo hum away over his chair, presumably blasting his body with x-rays, magnetic scans, and other assorted forms of energy that were allowing Sam a thorough inspection of his body. The scanner at work. That was the beauty of the Midas suite—intensive scans like MRIs or anything of that ilk could be accomplished in a casual setting and also in an expedited fashion. It still took ten minutes for anyone to get a complete scan, but it was better than lying down on a cold bench for an hour.

"Two drops of blood is all you need?" Shepard asked as he rubbed the spot on his wrist where the needle had pricked him. "Seemed like the doctors always took a full gallon from me whenever I had blood drawn before."

" _They're just being on the safe side, would be my guess,_ " Sam answered. " _The more blood, the more accurate the results. So the logic goes. The truth is that medical equipment has improved to the point where you only need a drop or two to be able to make an accurate scan. The tech's been around for a decade… more than a hundred and fifty years later than they said it would take for it to come to consumer markets._ "

The snarky tone that Sam was using suggested that he was hinting at a reference that Shepard had no exposure to. He decided not to ask the man to elaborate further.

As the scanner continued to run, Sam stood back from his own display, rubbing at his chin while keeping an arm crossed as he looked over Shepard's vitals.

" _You know_ ," Sam said out loud suddenly, " _my wife's a very big fan of yours_. _She'd freak if she heard that I was talking to you today, but as I said before, I'm going to have to keep this a secret from her. A shame, I would have liked to have seen her reaction to all of this._ "

"Is she now?" Shepard replied, a little bemused. Truth be told, Shepard had not been exposed to the sort of rabid hero worship over the years. His isolation on Rannoch had been quite effective in insulating him from the effusive and sycophantic praises that were being sung about him in the streets of every civilized planet or space station. As such, Shepard had little defenses for this sort of talk and he could only shuffle in his chair in embarrassment, some heat rising to his cheeks.

"No surprise there," Garrus snorted from the corner. "Shepard's always had good luck with the ladies."

"Only _one_ lady," Shepard corrected with a sigh, his voice so tender that it immediately caused Garrus to clamp his jaw shut, verbally backed into a corner at this point.

Through the hologram, Sam gave Shepard a sympathetic smile. " _I heard what happened to her. When she passed, I mean. You have my condolences, Shepard. She always seemed like an incredible woman_."

Shepard dimly nodded, his attention focused elsewhere as the ghost of a heavenly laugh echoed in his ear tauntingly. "Yeah," he muttered, hoping that his solemn mood would not be noticed by the doctor. "Tali really was… something else."

Shepard continued to stare off into space for a moment before he seemed to brighten, the melancholy having fled his body, taking a breath so deep that it seemed to inflate his body. The ghostly laughter faded. "But that's not important right now. You said that your wife was… what was it, a fan, Sam?"

" _Oh yeah_ ," Sam's grin returned gratefully. " _She's always been fascinated with your story. Devours every book that broaches the entire length of the war. Thinks that you're an inspiration. Same with my daughter, in fact. Kids her age, they love having role models_."

It was almost too tempting for Shepard to blurt out that his daughter probably felt the same way in some sort of tertiary and confused version of love, but he kept silent on that for now. Roahn was not exactly public knowledge, at least not beyond his closest friends and comrades, and he preferred to keep it that way until Roahn was ready for the real galaxy that awaited her.

"How old's your daughter?" Shepard asked, grateful that he had this avenue of small talk to explore.

" _Taylor will be ten later this year_ ," Sam smiled proudly. " _Children certainly get rambunctious at that age, let me tell you._ "

Now it was _really_ difficult for Shepard not to mention his sentiments.

Instead, he decided to try his luck a different way.

"Do you find that your life was any harder when you had children?" Shepard asked while keeping his vision lowered. "Or has it been rewarding for you the whole way?"

Sam laughed genuinely, nearly clutching his gut as he reared backwards for a second. " _Shepard, having kids is going to be difficult, no matter how hard you try. They can be calm one day and a total hurricane the next. That's just how kids are. So… yes, having kids will be tough, no doubt about it. But_ ," he added as he lifted a finger, " _no matter the trials, I will say that they will be part of some of your most cherished memories for the rest of your life. You may be at your wits end for a moment, but in the long run, it will be the best reward you will have ever received. At least, that's my take on it._ "

The doctor turned a little more somber as he crossed his arms, now appearing to stare off into space. " _The point is that things… might not turn out how you'd expect. There's no telling what the next day will bring. Trust me, I know all about weathering the unexpected. Especially with my own daughter. But that's all part of the end goal. If you play things just right, the memories of the hardships will fade away, just like that_."

Sam snapped his fingers, the sound crystal clear and echoing perfectly.

Shepard took all that in without another word. His fingers clenched upon the armrests of the chair, causing the tendons in his hands to stand firmly out. His teeth slowly ground against one another in his mouth, a tic that always occurred when he was deep in thought.

 _The best reward_ , Shepard repeated in his head. _And all I've done is squander it._

Meanwhile, Sam was dutifully tapping away on his own console, his attention back to normal, his fingers a blur upon his keyboard. " _All right. Scan's all finished now. Feel free to fidget on your own time, Shepard_."

Another widespread hologram then booted up next to Sam's projection, this one depicting an inside view of Shepard's body. The scans had certainly been thorough. The depiction ran the gamut of perspectives upon Shepard, from portraying different layers on each of his systems, including his muscular, nervous, and skeletal systems, among others. There were even different offerings of his body in varying wavelengths, allowing both doctor and patient to view Shepard's body in ways that were normally invisible to the human eye.

Sam ran his cursor over different parts of the mockup of Shepard's skeleton, no doubt noticing the cybernetic enhancements that had been grafted directly to his bone. Hell, Sam was soon running a separate view that was specifically filtering out objects in Shepard's body that were not organic. A mish-mash of cybernetic weaves and implants hovered in mid-air, comprising a crude humanoid shape that formed to Shepard's body. Shepard unconsciously flexed a hand, knowing that, just underneath his skin, there was a fine mesh of analogous mechanical systems residing there—all over his whole body, no less. Implants melded to bone and organs, as seen on the visual, the very things that had revived him from his so-called death and what had kept him alive at the end of the war. A significant portion of him artificial, a piece of his humanity locked away.

" _You have to give them credit_ ," Sam mused as he stared at the implants while tapping away, referring to Cerberus' handiwork. " _They certainly were thorough_."

"They certainly were," Shepard hoarsely reiterated.

Sam then depressed a key three times, made a quick face, and then shrugged. " _Well, it doesn't seem that your implants are showing any signs of rejection. That's good. Means that there will be less things to go awry._ "

"Pardon me for asking, Sam," Shepard carefully rubbed at his temples, "but you don't seem all that surprised as to how exhaustive and comprehensive my implants are. I mean… they're not exactly all that commonplace."

Sam did not respond for such a long time that Shepard thought the connection on the call had been frozen. But then the doctor coughed, showing a miniscule flash of guilt, before answering.

" _Let's just say that, in my line of work, nothing surprises me that much anymore. Fair enough?"_

"Yeah," Shepard shrugged, disregarding his notion. "Fair enough."

Sam then resumed running through diagnostics upon his console, his image showing that he was dragging various icons around his screen as he expertly maneuvered his way through the testing process. He definitely seemed adept at his craft, Shepard observed. Blunt, succinct. No wonder Garrus had such a positive impression of this guy.

It was also safe to say that Shepard was starting to like Sam as well.

" _Oookay_ ," Sam mused as he chewed on the end of a stylus. " _Blood tests results are coming through now. Let's see what we have here. All right, so it looks like both red and white blood cells are good… as are your platelets… hemoglobin and hematocrit measures normal… glucose, calcium, and electrolytes a bit on the low side, but not abnormal… kidneys showing some strain, but within parameters… and…"_

The stylus in Sam's mouth dipped suddenly as his eyes paused on one of the testing lines. Apprehensive, the doctor started to delve in deeper, tapping upon his keyboard to obtain more information, checking to see if he was seeing things correctly.

But somehow, Shepard had a feeling he already knew what had struck Sam like that.

" _That's… certainly odd_ ," Sam mused as he squinted at his screen. " _You've apparently tripped a few of the microRNA tests. Detection of the molecules miR-133b, miR-215, and miR-375 have all registered positive hits. That shouldn't happen… unless…_ "

"Don't worry, doc," Shepard sighed as he scrunched one of his hands up upon the armrest. "I was expecting this."

Sam's look was blank as he tried to understand what Shepard was trying to infer. He kept his reaction muted when he eventually did realize, trying his damnedest to be subtle with his facial expressions, yet there was a distinct air of worry about the man, discernable even through the QEC call.

" _You already knew?_ " Sam spoke slowly, drawing out a confirmation. " _Shepard… these microRNA tests… they're not something to be disregarded."_

"I've known about it for a bit now. I've been taking the proper medication to quell the symptoms."

" _Entolimod?_ "

"Yeah."

" _I see_." Sam chewed his lip as he entered some information on his screen, setting his stylus to the side. " _You remember when you were diagnosed?_ "

"Two years ago."

" _Were you showing signs of symptoms before then?_ "

"I guess. Not really sure."

More clacking of keys. Sam was not taking his eyes off his screen as his fingers worked at a rapid-fire pace. " _You remember how this happened, if you don't mind my asking?"_

"No, I don't mind," Shepard shook his head. "But to answer your question… I really don't know what the exact cause was. I've gone through all the possibilities in my head for a long time, now. There've just been too many opportunities for this to crop up on me." He waved a hand up and down, referring to his condition.

It was obvious that that answer did not completely satisfy Sam, but he did not pressure the point any further. He instead made a note to himself and gave the console a swipe with the flat of his hand, bringing it back to the home screen.

" _Well, other than what I already mentioned, it seems like you're within normal boundaries. As long as you continue to take your medication, that should be enough to alleviate the worst of the symptoms_."

From the back of the room, Garrus perked his head up. "Nothing more to add, doc?"

Sam shrugged. " _Nothing else to say. I'm not going to beat a dead horse here, despite my occupational proclivity to do so. If you're already aware of your ailments, then it's safe to say that any chastising on my end will be pointless_." With a final tap on his keyboard, Sam closed his console and spread his arms wide. " _But what I can say at this point is that… seeing you up and about, Shepard… well… know that there are still people out there who unquestionably support all you have done. It's just unfortunate that you had to be vilified by the politicians. You deserved better_."

 _Isn't that the truth_ , Shepard thought to himself, barely managing to contain his smile as he found himself agreeing with Sam's every word. It definitely sounded very similar to a kind of sentiment that the turian behind him would give him back in the good old days. Hell, it could have even sounded realistic coming out of Tali's mouth. She was one of the few that had been able to cut him down to the bone with just her words.

"I'll transfer your fee to you in a second," Garrus said as he started to approach the console, but the hologram of Sam held up a hand.

" _Forget the fee, Vakarian. I'm not about to charge men of your stature. It's just not my prerogative_."

"But still—," Garrus tried to protest, but Sam was having none of it.

" _I'm not taking a single fucking credit out of you. If word gets out that I charged one of the Normandy crew for a regular medical checkup, I'd be labelled as the cheapest son-of-a-bitch in the galaxy. If you don't believe me, just check out the headlines from five years ago, when an Illium medic charged Liara T'Soni a prescription fee for a regular medication. They got labelled a tightwad and lost all their business. Anything you want out of me, I can do for you gratis. It's the least that I can do, in my opinion_."

Garrus backed down, making a little noise in his throat as he did so. "Why do I get the feeling that we might just take you up on that offer someday?"

" _Hey_ ," Sam grinned as he scratched at his bearded chin. " _On that day, I'd be happy to oblige_. _Scout's honor._ "

"Thanks for the assist, doc."

" _No trouble, Vakarian. And you, Shepard. I hope things work out for you in the end_."

"I hope so as well," Shepard said tiredly.

"As do I," Garrus said before he waggled a finger in the doctor's direction. "And remember, doc…"

" _I know, I know_ ," Sam held up a hand as he moved to terminate the connection. " _Mum's the word, Vakarian. Mum's the word._ "

* * *

A blank wall. Completely featureless. Matte beige. Nothing at all interesting or notable about it.

Yet Roahn consistently found herself returning her vision to the blank face, only because it happened to be the only wall directly across from her that she could see without turning her head within her room, her little partition delved away exclusively for her. She lay upon the small and uncomfortable cot, arms crossed behind her head as she tried to relax in a semi-reclined position. The hard padding of the wall behind her bit into her shoulder blades and her back was aching from being put in an awkward space.

The soft rap upon the door immediately shot adrenaline into her veins. Finally, a break from monotony.

Roahn hopped to her feet took a singular step, able to cross the length of the entire room in an instant. She palmed the access point and stood back as the door opened.

Soft notes of gray and blue clustered on armor plating wrapped around the individual standing in her doorway. Roahn found her jaw agape once more as she lifted her head in awe.

"Mind if I come in?" Garrus asked the girl, his voice soft.

Roahn would have laid out the red carpet if she had one available.

"Uh… s-s-sure…" Roahn stammered.

 _Nice_ , she thought despairingly. _Very smooth, Ro_.

Garrus did not seem to care, for he considerately edged himself into the room and took a seat upon the only chair in the room. Roahn, after a time, timidly crossed back over to her bed and sat directly across from the turian, her hidden expression one of amazement.

"What's going on?" Roahn asked Garrus. "Where's my dad?"

Garrus adjusted himself on the seat and raised his head, giving Roahn a better view of his eyes, colored a watery reef.

"Your father's on the upper deck," Garrus pointed upwards for emphasis, "plotting a course for our next destination. I don't blame him for not wanting to stay on Omega any longer than necessary. But right now, I just want to talk with you a bit, Roahn. After all, Shepard's like family to me, which makes _you_ family as well. I guess I just want you to have the opportunity to know me. And… and I'd just like to talk to you, if that's all right with you."

Roahn's head might as well have exploded in that instant. Garrus Vakarian… the dashing turian sharpshooter of the Normandy crew… was interested in talking to _her?!_ The only reason why she did not freak out in that instant and let out an incredibly girlish squeal was that she had temporarily forgotten how to breathe while Garrus was speaking.

If only Roahn knew where to start.

"Well… I… I… I…" Roahn hopelessly tried but it was not until she had to seriously pause herself to take a breath of sweet, filtered air, did she manage to regain any control over her speech. "W-What do you want to talk about?"

"Honestly, I have no idea," Garrus said as he leaned back, keeping a casual air. "Shepard's been keeping me updated on what you've been doing so much that I feel that this isn't the first time that we've actually talked. It actually feels like I've known you for years."

 _Wish I could feel the same_ , Roahn thought sourly. "I never got to hear much about you from my parents. Mom told me the most, of course, but dad… well… you know him better than I do, probably."

Garrus eyed his talons as he clasped his hands together, his subharmonics creating a barely audible thrum in the room.

"I can't speak for Shepard completely, but your father has always been a rather secretive person, Roahn. It's just something that he's never fully adjusted to, all this openness. There were times that it even took _me_ a great deal of effort just to pry simple things out of him. Like when your parents first started a relationship, everyone knew at the time, but he would never give a firm answer whenever I prodded him, either choosing to stay silent or give an extremely noncommittal answer. He can be a very frustrating person, sometimes."

"No argument there," Roahn chuckled. Laughing felt like she was rapidly returning to her normal self, only less stressed out than she was before. It was certainly the best natural relaxant one could ever hope to find.

"But," Garrus added as he raised a talon, "your father is still the same man that I would follow into hell and back. When I first met him on the Citadel, I was just a regular C-Sec officer, relegated to a monotonous life of gradually moving around the meritocracy. When Shepard suddenly showed up and offered me a chance to join him on his mission to pursue Saren, our mutual quarry, I jumped at the chance. Considering the results, it would be a choice that I would make again and again, knowing the eventual outcome."

"What kind of a leader was he?" Roahn asked as she shuffled herself around on the bed. "Everyone said that dad was this amazing leader. But… I just can't see it. Was he… intense? Were you ever scared of him?"

Garrus politely chuckled. "Intense is one word, but I'd think that Shepard would rather not have that be his sole descriptor. _Focused_ would probably be better. Shepard could be fearsome in combat, but to his comrades, he was always approachable. He was someone who let his actions do all the talking on the battlefield. He was very calm, reserved… confident in his abilities, but not a trace of braggadocio. On top of that, he could be very personable. Charismatic, even. He always wanted to know if we were going to bring our all on the missions. He made sure we went into battle with no distractions. Honestly, I know that, for the rest of my life, I will never meet a person that could possibly even come close to the same league as Shepard."

And if Roahn was being honest, she was thinking that the entire characterization sounded downright bizarre. It was obvious that Garrus had a preconceived notion about her father from his experiences with him, but what memories did _she_ have of Shepard that would want to make her follow him to the edge of the known universe? It was hard to believe that the two of them were talking about the same person. Charismatic? If it had not come from _Garrus Vakarian's_ mouth, she would have laughed in his face.

This whole topic was not sitting well with her, like she had just eaten something foul and that her gut was disagreeing with her. She decided to switch gears slightly as a warm sensation accompanied by a fleeting image in her head came and went, leaving Roahn feeling slightly empty inside.

"My mother…" Roahn gasped before she caught her breath. "What was she like?"

That question gave Garrus pause and he shifted from side to side as he considered his answer. "Has Shepard not talked all that much about Tali either?"

"It makes him too upset," Roahn admitted. "He always gets sad when he thinks about her. He tries not to show it, but I can tell."

Unbeknownst to Roahn, Garrus had wilted from the girl's words, finding it rather disheartening to hear just how in the dark Roahn had been kept all this time. He knew that Shepard had been rather cagey with the details surrounding his past, but he had not expected such a myopia, such a lack of context, that Roahn had not yet been allowed to peruse yet. _How could he not tell this girl about her mother?_ Garrus thought in anguish. _This was Tali. His fiercest love. And he cannot bring himself to talk about her to his own daughter?_

"I see," he could only say before he finally addressed the pertinent question, trying very hard not to broach a topic that Roahn's father might see as inappropriate or ill-timed. "Your mother—Tali—was an extraordinary woman, Roahn. I really did like her upon first meeting her, although I will admit that there were times when we butted heads on certain ideals, but it was her adamant nature to keep to her ideals that impressed me. And if she happened to be wrong on something, which was rare, she would always see reason eventually and handle it with grace. She had drive, passion, and she was also quite the handy shot with a shotgun. You could always count on her to get you out of a close-quarters situation."

Roahn's smile was broadening all the more while Garrus talked.

"I would have liked to have seen her in action," she mused.

"She was a sight to behold, most definitely. Extraordinarily smart, to boot. Not really much of a surprise that Shepard ended up falling for her in the end."

"Why do think that is?" Roahn pressed.

Garrus considered the ceiling, wanting to make sure that he worded everything correctly. "Shepard always had a knack for being able to dig deep down into a person, to find what made them tick as beings. Now, Tali was someone that proved herself to be extraordinarily loyal to Shepard, but not out of an obligation for her duty, but as an obligation to _him_. She trusted him that much to know that he would always do the right thing, and Shepard was enamored with that trust she was showing. I think he must have felt that it was humbling. But at first, it never seemed like they were going to progress beyond anything than just friends."

"What do you think changed it all?"

"I'd think that his initial death had something to do with it," Garrus said. "Shepard was not quite the same person when he was revived. He was more serious… more morose. He was like a machine that would not quit—he was fully committed to stopping the Reapers at any cost to the point where he felt that if he stopped fighting, even for a moment, he would be overwhelmed and destroyed. I guess he figured that he was not going to waste his second chance at life by doing nothing. Yet there was always one constant in his life at that point, one person continuously striving to keep Shepard anchored to reality, always making sure that he would not burn himself out."

Roahn sat up straighter. " _Mom_."

Garrus nodded. "Tali cared about your father a lot. She was continuously by his side because of her love for him. She looked after him constantly, always keeping a watchful eye, always tending to his wounds when he got hurt. And Shepard, he noticed her attentiveness to him. He too fell in love. Tali managed to keep a hold on Shepard's last shred of humanity, the one thing that prevented him from going completely off the rails. In that sense, she saved him many times over. At the crucial moment, she was the most welcome presence in his life. It's what kept him alive after the war, I personally believe. It's what made him fight."

Roahn now had a dreamy look on her face as she tried to imagine her mother, striking a heroic pose (her _sehni_ flapping in the wind), as she tended to her bloodied father, Tali's eyes sparkling with a searing fire of determination and adoration behind her visor. It was weird to imagine her mother as an icon, but once the image had taken hold in her head, it proved surprisingly difficult to diffuse.

"That being said," Garrus added with a fair bit of mirth, "they tried to keep their relationship on the down-low when they first started out. Worst kept secret of all time, if you ask me."

"How's that?" Roahn asked.

Garrus smirked, his eyes narrowing playfully. "I saw the two of them holding hands while walking out of the elevator of the Normandy. Plus, your dad had a very un-Shepard like grin on his face. Not that hard to put two and two together."

"That bad, huh?" Roahn laughed.

"Pitiful. They still thought they had gotten away with it for weeks. I love them both but they were hopeless when it came to concealing their romantic feelings. They really had no sort of experience with that kind of thing before."

The thought was amusing to Roahn and she giggled at the mental image. However, she quickly sobered as she remembered the sight of her father now: grizzled, morose, and hardened from time. No trace remaining of the kind of person that Garrus had known in his lifetime.

Despair quickly overcame her and Roahn's eyes started to bubble with tears. Ashamed and embarrassed that she was crying in front of her idol, Roahn lowered her head and wept as silently as she could, her body shuddering in time to her sobs.

Garrus spotted the girl crying almost immediately and moved over to comfort her. "What brought this on?" he spoke softly as he helped straighten Roahn back up. "What's the matter, Roahn?"

"It… it's d-dad," Roahn spluttered. "I've b-barely seen him… when he was… truly happy. Only with mom… he was only happy w-with mom. Am… am I the cause of this? D-Does dad… resent me? Am I just a hind-… a hind-…"

The hands at her shoulders suddenly gripped Roahn hard, causing her to take a deep breath, absorbing some of the tears.

"Let me tell you something, Roahn," Garrus' voice now took on a tinge of iciness, "if your father heard you say that right now, you would just destroy him."

"B-But… he just seems so _stern_ to me. I just want the father that my mom knew. That _you_ knew. Just someone I could talk to… instead of a stranger."

"Listen, Roahn. I know you might think that you could be a complication in your father's life. I'm here to tell you that that's _not true at all_."

"He certainly doesn't _show_ it," Roahn mumbled, her face flushed, eyes still moist.

"Because he doesn't know how you have felt this whole time. Only now has he been getting an idea of what you're going through. We're talking about the same man who, every week without fail, would gush with pride over you on every single call we made. Every week, he told me what you had been up to. He was attentive, overjoyed to be a father, not once having a single regret over having you in his life."

For the umpteenth time, Roahn wished that she could just throw away this visor and be able to wipe her eyes. This wet feeling on her face was starting to become an annoyance.

"Why couldn't he just… _tell_ me?" Roahn moaned.

"That's just how your father is," Garrus merely said. "Shepard's a complicated man. He may be very stiff with his emotions, but there cannot be any rival for the two people that he has loved the most fiercely: your mother and you. I can attest that, even though it might not be obvious, you make your father very happy when he's around you. You're all he has now—there's no way that he would ever lose you."

The words were there. The emotion, the intent. No way that Garrus was lying to her face. Every syllable was draped in seriousness as the turian spoke laboriously, drawing out every word so that there would be no confusion.

But in spite of that, the effect was still nebulous on Roahn. All she had were words to combat her experiences with her father. Despite Shepard's best intentions to open up more to his daughter, Roahn still had too many memories that lingered only on Shepard's stiffness and perceived inattentiveness to her throughout her life. Garrus had known Shepard for fifteen years, six more than Roahn did. And Garrus had been through a lot more with her father—she only had to endure her mother's death with him, and even then, he had been despairingly distant.

The worst part was that she had all the proof she needed, in the form of Garrus here, that her father had been a drastically different man once upon a time. All she had to go on was his word… as well as the word of the entire galaxy, that Shepard was, in fact, a decent man.

 _Decent_. A rich sentiment. It was like everyone was laughing at her for being unable to get the joke. Even more so, Roahn felt isolated. The odd one out. Doomed to remain adrift while everyone else remained stable on land.

Everyone seemed to be able to "get" her father. Except her.

"I wish I could believe you," was her only answer to Garrus, who could only give a subtle growl of apprehension in return.

* * *

 _The sky through the windows was dripping with a golden shade of amber, dousing the bedroom in a cascade of tan so thick that Shepard was almost drowning in it. The light fell upon the bedsheets, long shadows from the posts in the windows displaying morbid crosses upon the tousled surface. The fabric, warmed from the sun, was hot to the touch, like the blankets were being heated from below, a fire stirring deep below the house._

 _Even though he was partially blinded by the rays of the setting star, Shepard stood in front of the clear glass door that led to the deck, observing the roaring waves pounding the cliffs and the beach several meters below. His hands were folded behind his back and he took a deep breath, almost imagining that he could smell the salt of the sea, even through the glass._

 _He turned his head slightly at something that Tali said behind him._

" _Absolutely not," he emphasized before Tali could finish. "We'll do no such thing."_

 _He heard Tali start spluttering in protest. "But… but… it's not right! We have to tell her, John! We can't just—,"_

" _We can and we will," Shepard finally turned around, making a cutting motion with his hand, a usual sign that he was not going to budge on this issue. "She's too young to have this dropped on her. We're not going to tell our daughter that her mother is seriously ill. All she's going to know is that you're dealing with a slight sickness, nothing more."_

 _Tali, completely clad in her enviro-suit, edged closer off the bed, her hands furrowing the blankets below her through tortured knuckles. Her limbs, subject to intense trembles, caused her body to look like it was constantly undulating, as Tali had to keep herself moving to disperse the pain._

" _S-Slight?" Tali uttered in horror before she raised an involuntarily shaking hand, letting her husband see how bad the shakes were. "Is this slight? Does this look like something that can be trivialized to you?"_

 _Shepard just glanced at Tali's arm for a long time before he strode over to the bed and gently cupped her hand in both of his, feeling her bones through her suit as he gently rubbed a thumb along the back of her hand. The gesture had the immediate effect of steadying the quarian, quelling her uncontrollable shuddering and causing calm to disperse throughout her in an even flow._

" _Tali," he spoke softly, "we don't need to worry about this too much. We were lucky that we caught your illness early. All the doctors—they have high hopes for you. They really do think that you have a guaranteed shot at pulling through. Roahn… I… we don't need to tell that girl that her mother is ailing from something like this. She's not old enough to understand."_

" _She's not a baby. She's five," Tali defended hotly. "And she's very observant for her age. You know that we can't hide this from her forever."_

" _That doesn't mean we can't try. I would prefer it that Roahn never know about this close call. If she were to go the rest of her life without knowing this, I would be satisfied."_

" _We can't do that to her! We can't lie to Roahn like that!"_

" _So what should we do?" Shepard let go of Tali's hand as he walked back towards the patio door, hoping to draw solace simply by looking out at the sea. "Observant or not, how are we supposed to tell Roahn that her mother is suffering as we speak? How can we explain to her that you have to undergo a very serious chemical treatment soon, one that has the potential to subject you to even more pain, or that you might eventually need surgery to fix the tumor that is in the process of metastasizing within you? Five years old is way too young to have to even think about losing a mother. We can't put that kind of stress on a young child. We need to act as if everything is normal!"_

 _Before Shepard could intervene, Tali abruptly shot to her feet, yanking the covers off the bed so violently that the very movement caused a stray plate, perched upon the edge of the bed, to be dislodged and fall down upon the carpeted floor, whereupon it cracked in half. Tali rose, her eyes twin infernos, as she heavily limped over to Shepard, letting out an audible gasp each time she placed any weight upon her left leg. The limp was so pronounced that Tali's center of gravity was highly skewed to the right, and Shepard's heart sank as he saw his wife stagger over to him._

 _He wanted to tell her to stop, but he found himself unable to._

" _We can't pretend," Tali seethed, but it was through a quiet agony instead of raw, unfiltered anger. "I can't do it, John. I won't lie to my daughter. I need to prepare her in case I don't get better. She needs to know if there's a chance that she won't have a mother in her life. I want that girl to understand. I only want her to know that I… I love—,"_

 _Shepard just shook his head. "I'm sorry. We can't."_

" _I won't accept that."_

" _You have to. We promised to give that girl a perfect life. We can do nothing to dispel that in any way."_

" _I don't care!" Tali snarled, momentarily forgetting herself. "It's wrong, John! It's wrong to do that to her!"_

" _Tali," Shepard's face turned stern, "I will not tell that child that her mother 'may' die."_

" _Then I will! I'm not going to stand by and leave Roahn without knowing—"_

 _Without warning, Tali's right knee gave out and she began to pitch forward in a clumsy fall. She would have hit the ground hard, had Shepard not darted forward to safely catch her. Tali stumbled and her legs kicked feebly against the ground in a vain effort to gain traction. Her fingers weakly grasped at Shepard's arms and she gave out a minute sob as she felt the frustration burn within her at her loss of control._

 _With the tearful quarian in his arms, utterly dependent, Shepard silently scooped Tali up, hoisting her seemingly frail body waist-high. Tali clutched at Shepard's chest and gave a weak murmur, her eyes fluttering in a newfound lethargy. Shepard carried Tali back over to the bed and gently placed her upon the mattress, making sure to fluff up the pillows and to straighten the blankets back out to make his wife as comfortable as possible._

 _Shepard tried very hard to keep his expression masked. He did not even want to imagine a life of Tali being so defenseless in her sickness, let alone a life without her. No… no, he mustn't think like that. Tali was going to get better. She would be back to normal in a matter of months. He would not have to worry about this silly notion of her dying and they could all get back to their regular lives._

 _Tali dying. What ludicrousness. The very same woman who had withstood years of war be brought down by a simple illness? It seemed too insulting of a fate for him to even conceive. Shepard's joints ached and popped as he resumed tucking Tali into bed, the light in his eyes becoming duller as his mouth became harder. He was not going to lose Tali. Not now. Not ever. She would not die with him looking after her. He needed her too damn much for her to go like that._

 _And their daughter. Tali needed to be there for her too. Roahn had to have a mother. That girl deserved the universe—to grow up barely having a mother… the thought was too terrible for Shepard to imagine._

 _Sighing, Shepard wheeled over the infusion pole upon which hung a clear plastic bag in which a clear saline solution was already sloshing around within: an IV bag. He took the end of the tube that connected to the bag and sat down on the bed next to Tali. He lifted up a flap of her_ sehni _so that he could access the miters underneath and connect the fluids to her bloodstream, but Tali feebly raised her head and tried to swat his hand away._

" _I can…" she tried, "I can do this myself."_

 _Shepard gave a deliberate pause. A clear lie on her end. A futile attempt to diffuse the atmosphere of moroseness that had befallen the both of them. If she couldn't even lift a hand, how could she… Shepard shook his head, not even bothering to try to see the logic in Tali's words._

" _Can you really?" he asked, earnestly wondering if Tali actually could or if she was merely bluffing to try and gain some of her dignity back._

 _However, it was evident from the fact that Tali's eyes were struggling from a great effort that her previous statement had, in fact, been a bluff._

" _I just… just…" Tali panted. "I feel bad."_

" _Yeah, that typically happens when you're sick, honey."_

" _No. I feel bad because you have to look after me. That you have to give me my injections every single day while I rest. I hate being a burden on you, John. I cannot stand it."_

 _The honesty and selflessness was so touching that Shepard could not resist using the back of his hand to gently rub against the side of Tali's suited neck, the pressure of which caused her to sigh deeply in longing, shifting her head into his touch._

" _Too many times have you stood watch over my bed while I healed," Shepard whispered as he laid his head close to Tali's. "Cleaning my wounds, washing my body, even holding me when the pain became too much to bear. You showed me throughout the years how deep your love ran. Let me show you what your kindness has done. Let me help you."_

 _From the nightstand, Shepard took out a syringe filled with a pale green liquid, the color of sour grapes. Smoothly, Shepard stood back up so that he could connect the syringe to the IV bag, slowly injecting its contents into the larger container, creating a steady drip of fluids. The medicine swirled within the saline solution, creating tiny whirlpools of color as it billowed and furrowed. Drawn by gravity, the medicine travelled down the tube and directly through the miter to access Tali's blood stream._

 _Tali gave a little shiver as she felt a cold liquid sensation enter her and Shepard helped tuck the blankets over her in response. The quarian became slightly listless, her eyelids drooping noticeably, as the compound's relaxant effects already took hold._

" _John…" Tali uttered sleepily._

" _Tali," Shepard squeezed his wife's shoulder gently._

" _R-Roahn… you have to…"_

 _Shepard blinked and lowered his head down, unable to hear Tali clearly the first time._

" _You need…" Tali gasped, "…to talk to your daughter. She… asks me every week… what you did before… before she was born. She is going to know… sooner or later… who you are. Whatever you do… you can't lie to her about this. You just can't."_

 _Shepard did not respond to his wife, but merely waited until the glow from her eyes faded as she drifted off into sleep, leaving her request untaken, the troth hanging. With a final soft pat on the side of Tali's helmet, Shepard tightened the blankets over his wife one last time before he rose to leave her in peace._

" _When Roahn is old enough," he whispered to the sleeping quarian, "I'll tell her."_

 _But…_ the voice in his head lingered _, am I still keeping to my word?_

Opening his eyes to find the black expanse of space once more greeting him from the windows of the flight deck, Shepard breathed in heavily through his nostrils, pouring sterile air into his lungs while also dispelling his longing reminiscence, no matter how much he would have given anything to just jump in and live within his memories. They were the only place where his wife still lived, after all.

Shepard checked his chronometer and found that he had been daydreaming for damn near half an hour. Garrus and Roahn must be getting antsy down below, if they had not already started to wonder what had been taking him so long.

Shaking his head, Shepard flicked the last of the switches on the dashboard by flitting his hands over the haptic interface, causing the ship to disengage from Omega's docks fully and to move on a steady heading to the mass relay, the only exit out of this godforsaken system.

"I'm trying, Tali," Shepard uttered as he began to rise from his chair. "I really am."

Leaving the autopilot to do the rest of the work from here on out, Shepard clambered down the ladder as the main display began to run a calculated ETA for Thessia, the next destination on their journey. Satisfied that everything was now all in order up here, Shepard finished his descent towards the main deck, not content to leave his daughter and best friend alone for very long.

His presence was needed, after all.

* * *

 **A/N: I'm back from vacation, thoroughly rested and rearing to go! I know that some people have been clamoring for Garrus to finally make an appearance in this story (physically, at least), so hopefully this managed to meet your expectations. Rest assured, Garrus will now be sticking around for quite a while, so have no fear that I'm just going to dump him right away. What kind of idiotic move would that be?**

 **At the very least, I should be getting back on a more regular schedule by now. Time to get back to work.**

 **Playlist:**

 **Roahn Returns/Garrus Arrives: "Idyll's End" by Hans Zimmer from the film _The Last Samurai_**

 **Garrus and Roahn Speak: "Laura" by Marco Beltrami from the film _Logan_**

 **A Tearful Discussion/Bedridden: "The Last Man" by Clint Mansell from the film _The Fountain_**


	13. Chapter 13: Foundation of Lies

" _Now that we have the public records introduced as part of our evidence, let's take a look at the list of campaign donors that are displayed on Chimera's sheets. Exhibit 16b, I believe. Nothing out of the ordinary upon first glance, although one does note that Chimera has a distinct pattern of donating rather large sums of money bi-annually to many political action committees for politicians whose views align with the corporation's interests. We will state for the record that this committee right now is not charging Chimera with improper donations—ever since Citizen's United v. FEC was overturned in 2021, it has been deemed illegal for any corporation to donate directly to a campaign. Donations to PACs are still allowed, and Chimera is apparently abiding by that law."  
_ Sen. Shah – Indian Republic

" _Will there be an overall point to this statement, senator?"  
_ Erich Koenig – CEO, Chimera

" _If you would refrain from making any butting comments, all of us would reach that point quicker, Mr. Koenig."  
_ Sen. Shah – Indian Republic

" _You're right. My apologies."_  
Erich Koenig – CEO, Chimera

" _Your apology is unnecessary. What is necessary is to understand Chimera's overall need to make any political donations at all. For a corporation with such an extensive governmental contract, it does not sit well with many of my colleagues that your company continues to wield influence like a heavy club, trying to buy loyalty with a massive checkbook. This sort of behavior is acceptable for those trying to find business with potential clients, but is considered boorish when a client has already been obtained. Are you understanding the picture right now?"  
_ Sen. Shah – Indian Republic

" _Senator, if Chimera has violated any laws, you might as well come out and say it."  
_ Erich Koenig – CEO, Chimera

" _We don't need to rise to such a challenge, Mr. Koenig. After all, this will only be all the more apparent come the time when your contract is nearing its expiration date. And many of us just might want to be beholden a little more to our constituents, whom might I add, are none too happy about your little arrangement. So, might as well try to remain as comfortable as you can, Mr. Koenig. Your behavior determines the future of your company."  
_ Sen. Shah – Indian Republic

* * *

 _Thessia_

When Roahn had eventually learned that she was about to step foot on Thessia, she initially had no idea what to make of it. Being a well-learned individual for her age, her first reaction was one of pleasant surprise. Another world for her to visit! A check mark to add to her growing list of galactic destinations! More sights, more sounds! It hit her in a vast hammer blow of incredulity in the beginning as her spirits summarily rose as she awaited to disembark.

However, upon seeing her father's tightened face as the glowing blue world proceeded into view after they had traversed the relay system, her enthusiasm withdrew from a boil down to a simmer. Her gut similarly twisted as the ship seared through the atmosphere, subtly yanked down as the planet's gravity took hold. Roahn held onto the guardrails as the craft bucked in the wake of turbulence, her eyes wide as she took in the sights from the window.

Black marks, charred and glassy, stretched on in uneven lines as far as the eye could see as Roahn's ship passed above ruffled grasslands. Enormous channels were seared into the ground, lingering reminders of scorching blows from gigantic laser-based attacks. A scar upon the land, a sign of the machine gods that had chosen to occupy this planet, and of the destruction they brought with them. The earth had cracked here, encrusted by heat in excess of a hundred thousand degrees. Plants, animals, and dirt had all melted into a shapeless mass of obsidian from the boiling attacks of the war, glistening and bubbling. Life was still burgeoning anew here, smashing its way from the layer of destruction to reach the pure air above.

Thessia, without resorting too much to hyperbole, had been the most stable economic power in the galaxy for millennia. The homeworld of the asari, Thessia had enjoyed for a long time, until war had come calling to its doorstep, a remarkably low rate of conflict, crime, or any sort of environmental disaster. There was a reason why many had dubbed this world "the crown jewel of the galaxy," or "the apex of democracy." Some romantics even referred to Thessia as the "beating heart of galactic love," most likely as a reference to the universally pleasing beings that inhabited the place.

Compared to the other forms of government that were erratically and sparsely pinpointed across the galaxy, the Thessian government enjoyed a fair share of influence across the entire Milky Way, both economically and politically. Thessia was practically inundated with natural reserves of element zero, so much that the asari's close proximity to eezo veins result in giving every single one the side effect of having active biotics in their body systems when they are born. Eezo is quite reactive with cells, especially those in vitro, and young asari are nearly universally susceptible to being born with natural biotics, especially if they so happen to be born on Thessia. The demand for eezo galaxy-wide, taking into account just how economically important the substance is for many industries, gave Thessia all the wealth it would ever need. The asari flourished and enjoyed the luxuries of its riches over the centuries.

Perhaps this languid state, the mindset of being comfortable among excess, was partly one of the reasons why the asari had yet to completely repair all of the damage accrued during the Reaper War. In contrast, Earth had made huge strides in their reconstruction progress while on Thessia, there remained several neighborhoods that looked like they could have been detonated by proton bombs just yesterday. The asari had been so caught off-guard when they were attacked that they became collectively shell-shocked, dazed into a gaping horror that _something_ had manage to penetrate their veil of security, that had upended the perfect lives they had built for themselves.

From this distance above the ground, Roahn had quite the clear view at just how badly things had been _upended_ here.

The girl had never before been to a world as developed as Thessia before. The only major city Roahn had ever visited had been Rannoch's capital, which was a slum in comparison to the urban sprawl she could see down below.

From the air, all Roahn was able to view on the ground was chaos.

Toppled buildings crumbled onto the streets, still left behind as fresh as the day they had fallen. The metal of walkways lay bubbled and twisted, curling as they peeled away from the stone foundations upon which they had been bonded to. The curvature of elegant constructions, blackened and maimed, created a blight upon the skyline. Chunks of condominiums still lingered, looking like a giant creature had taken a bite out of them in passing. Crushed skycars littered every nook and cranny. Shattered gas lines, fractured from eruptions, sadly resided in huge craters, cracked open from where detonations had pockmarked the earth.

But after a minute, the craft passed over a partition and suddenly the underlying ground was all squeaky clean to Roahn's eyes. Sparkling and glimmering with an ethereal light, Roahn could hardly believe how rapidly the landscape had changed in the literal blink of an eye. No longer was she looking at the forsaken ruins of what had appeared to be a massive battle zone, now she was staring in awe at the very sort of images she had seen in textbooks, on the extranet, and that had been described in whispers by passing traders.

This was the true Thessia she had been expecting. An unbroken swath of gleaming silver—a city as far as the eye could see. Untarnished. Unbroken.

Here the towers cradled the sky, seeming to support even the heavens with their tall spires. A steady flow of traffic created arteries of lights in the air, while a churning pot of individuals far below produced a broil of color. Light from the sun bounced around a multitude of surfaces, giving the city the appearance that it was glowing all around Roahn. Her visor had to automatically darken to shield her eyes and she marveled at the wonder that lay before her.

Roahn's thoughts then trailed back to the skeletal remains of the city she had seen before. All that destruction and damage, seemingly swept under the rug in a callous fashion. How could the asari sleep comfortably at night, knowing that parts of their home languished like that in such disrepair? Was the cleaner part of the city all a façade, a means to instill upon the asari population that things were all back to normal on their world?

If she had lived in that squalor, Roahn thought, then she figured she could never feel the dull bite of normality ever again. To be faced with the towering walls of heat and fire… it seemed irresponsible to leave it all in the open.

Now Roahn had a dilemma all to herself to figure out. If this was how a civilized world dealt with the aftermath of a war, what else could she expect from other worlds like it?

* * *

It was initially unclear just what was on Shepard's itinerary for Thessia, and to be honest, it was not all that set in stone in his mind either. All he knew was that he wanted Roahn to have the chance to be able to understand his position the last time he was here and for her to gain a deeper understanding of why this war ended up with the outcome that transpired.

Fortunately, when he had broached his hazy plan to Garrus, the turian was immediately able to come up with an idea of how they could do just that. All they needed to do was to follow him for a few blocks after they landed and Garrus would show Shepard how he could provide his daughter just a little more context.

Landing at the spaceport was a rather dull affair, which suited Shepard just fine. He was not in the mood for any surprises right about now. The Thessian control tower did not need Shepard's name to confirm him for a landing spot, just the ID of his ship. This would ensure that his presence here would be kept rather quiet and that he would not have a gaggle of admirers waiting for him once he lowered the ramp to exit. Good thing too, as Shepard's flight from Rannoch was still pretty incognito to the rest of the civilized galaxy. When the trio eventually did leave the craft, all that greeted them was a sparse cluster of bored-looking dock attendants, already setting to refuel and restock the ship's supplies, barely paying any of them much mind.

This part of Thessia certainly looked to be in a much improved condition since the last time that Shepard had been here. It was a relief to be walking down the roads and to not have to anticipate a stray husk jumping at him from behind a walled garden, or to have a harvester make a strafing run upon his position from the air. Here, all he had to contend with were pedestrians—a sea of asari in every shade of blue imaginable to the eye. He had been armed and armored back then. He had courted danger at every turn when this planet had been burning. It was almost confusing to bear witness to what more than a decade of peace could accomplish.

Garrus led the way down an automated staircase, while Shepard kept Roahn close to his side. In their current attire, none of them were even remotely recognizable, and even when they found the main avenues for foot traffic, no bystander jumped from the crowd to accost them. They were invisible.

As he pushed his way through the flowing crowd of asari, Shepard felt a smile grace his lips. To be an anonymous face in the crowd was quite welcome. Blissful, even.

Very soon it was clear what Garrus was leading him to after about a mile of walking. A glimmering dome of a shimmering alloy flanked by towering skyscrapers, bulbous and bright, revealed itself past the passenger tunnels, asari script blazing proudly above the entrance.

 _The Athame Foundation – Gallery and Museum_ , it read.

Shepard silently looked at Garrus, who gave a complacent shrug.

"It'll be a learning experience, I wager," the turian drawled.

Shepard's fingers began unconsciously tapping on Roahn's shoulders, causing the girl to look up at her father expectantly, as if she was awaiting for him to say something to her.

"How'd you hear about this place?" Shepard directed to the turian.

Garrus shrugged. "I'm a fan of one of their guest lecturers."

"No, seriously."

Garrus tilted his arm so that Shepard could see something on his omni-tool. "I _am_ being serious."

Roahn could not see what Garrus was referring to, but a knowing spark in Shepard's eyes flared momentarily as he peered at the text upon the turian's tool and then he gave a quick smile, followed by a nod of acceptance. "A learning experience, indeed."

The turian then partially knelt down to appraise Roahn. "Ever been to one of these before?" He jerked a thumb back towards the entrance of the gallery.

Laboriously, Roahn shook her head. "Never. What's inside?"

Garrus gave a slow blink. "History, dear Roahn. Good and bad. If you want to understand your father more, this place will definitely help you."

Looking up to see if he had overstepped any bounds, Garrus expected Shepard to be shooting daggers at him with his eyes, but when he finally did lock eyes with the human, all he could see was acceptance and knowing in Shepard's face.

"We'll take as long as you need," Shepard said to his daughter as he affectionately squeezed her shoulders. "No sense in trying to censor things here. Unless the asari have already gone to the trouble…"

"Oh, they already have," Garrus uttered in a strangled whisper, after performing a double-take to make sure that not too many people within earshot. "They've removed any and all references to the… to the you-know-what. But the rest of the important parts, they haven't touched. Besides, you can help Roahn fill in the blanks, if you like."

"That's been my goal from the start, anyway."

"Splendid. Shall we?" Garrus made a grand gesture, a flourish with his arm, towards the automated raven dark glass doors, which parted to admit the three into a cavernous murk draped in black so thick that it cut out the bloody crimson rays of the sun behind them.

Cold air smashed into them in a frigid blast. Roahn had to hold on to her father otherwise she felt that she would be blown away.

Sweeping columns in a pyramidal scheme greeted the three as they entered the gallery, tall supports of deep purple that took on the appearance of thick arteries all running up to a metallic beating heart in the center: a holographic representation of the Milky Way as everyone knew it. A glimmering disc filled with the light of a billion stars, boiling and churning in the wake of combustible gases.

Roahn craned her head as far back as possible, but even so, she was unable to see the ceiling. Much like Omega, the roof just sloped up, and up, and up, until there was nothing but a vague shadow consuming her line of sight, despite the fact that she intrinsically knew the rafters had to connect to a point _somewhere_ up there. The girl shivered, feeling miniscule in this massive building.

As they all moved past an initial set of pillars that were twice as tall as Roahn, their omni-tools beeped as a small sum of credits was summarily docked from their accounts. The entrance fee.

Now that they were fully committed, Shepard and Garrus halted to congregate in the lobby, while scores of elegant asari flowed past them, not caring a whiff about the mismatched group in the middle of the foyer.

"Where to, Shepard?" Garrus asked as he pulled up a map of the place.

Shepard blinked. "Why are you asking me? This is the first time I've been here. How should I know where to look?"

"Just wanted to see if you had an opinion."

"I have _no_ opinion, Garrus. Let me see the map and I'll _form_ an opinion in due time."

Roahn rolled her eyes as she slowly edged away from the two squabbling men. Keelah, they could bicker like a married couple, all right. The acidity and snark being traded between Shepard and Garrus certainly came naturally to them. Maybe, Roahn considered, this was all part of the friendship between Garrus and Shepard—they knew each other so implicitly that they could afford to throw a few barbs at each other from time to time. Who knows, perhaps they enjoyed this petty side of arguing?

With her hands folded innocently behind her back, Roahn entered the first exhibit through the first darkly carpeted hallway once she was sure that her father and Garrus were following behind her several lengths away, at a staggered pace.

Roahn kept an open mind as she strolled through the first part of the museum, not exactly knowing what she was about to see, but she had to keep herself contained so that she would not dart all over the place looking to absorb everything in one go. After her little sojourn on Omega, she knew that her father would want to always have her in his sights from now on.

The introductory exhibit encapsulated the early history of Thessia, and the asari along with it. Giant behemoths of bone—fossils of extinct creatures that had roamed the planet millions of years ago—proudly stood upright, as if they could merely take a simple step forward… if only life clung to their bones once more. Accompanying the remains were early tools used by ancient asari hunters: arrowheads, skinning shears, rudimentary utensils. Derivations passed down from generation to generation. The trailing part of the timeline documenting the inspiration for items taken for granted nowadays.

The next sequence was a collection of antique art pieces created on Thessia. The variety of mediums spanned the length of a singular corridor that had to be half a mile in length. Rock paintings, sculptures, mosaics. Swaths of the most brilliant colors Roahn could imagine. Delicate dabs of paint dipped in water. Wide smears of thickly dyed acrylics. A renaissance of thought. Impressionistic interpretations.

Self-portraits of matriarchs. Depictions of the stars and worlds. Collections of storied writings. A history parallel to that of any other species.

A dazzle to the eyes. Roahn was transfixed.

But the girl would continue to have her attention pulled in every direction as she heard a projected voice echo from a side chamber. Roahn turned around and saw a sign pointing in the direction of the voice that indicated that she was looking at the entrance to a theater room. Perfect! More things to see!

"… _into raging waters Thessia befell, for in 2186 a scourge, one the current inhabitants of this galaxy had never seen the likes of before, descended upon us without warning_ ," the pleasant voice of the omnipresent narrator intoned, thought there was a dark undertone that was morosely reflected in the speaker.

Roahn padded into the room, finding that she was the only one in the circular space. A cushioned bench ringed the entire circumference of the room, but Roahn chose to stand smack dab in the center, as holo-screens taller than her lifted above her head, dousing the room with light, and filling her visor with wonder and terror simultaneously, thanks to the bevy of chaotic images that would soon grace its blank face.

The images being shown on the screens were not calm and still frames, but violent, shaking handheld clips depicting gigantic metal machines with spider-like legs, reaching heights taller than the tallest buildings on the planet, roaring ear-splitting bellows, and spewing vibrant and effervescent red bolts of light. Roahn could hear people in the footage screaming in panic and every so often she would get a flash of a panicked face as the asari on Thessia tried to flee from the Reapers, which were already proceeding to wreak havoc the moment they touched down upon the planet. The soundtrack that accompanied the clips was dark and brooding, simmering in the background, waiting for the perfect opportunity to swell and strike.

" _They showed no mercy_."

Beams spat from the Reapers in the footage, scything through skyscrapers in seconds. Civilians were vaporized in an instant, leaving behind either swirls of ash or blackened corpses that were devoid of any familiarity, all their flesh having been melted off.

" _No one was given any opportunity to surrender_."

Rabid husks were shown jumping out of storefront windows, smashing straight through plate glass, leaving a trail of slick ichor behind. Marauders carefully plodded at an even length, firing jagged beams of energy into a fleeing crowd of asari. Cannibals tucked their heads, their arms outstretched, and dove into the pack of people with aplomb. Even from the shaky angles, Roahn could still see blood and flesh fountain into the air and she wobbled where she stood, simultaneously astonished and a little sickened.

" _We could not fight back. We were being hunted_."

A new angle in the film focused intensely upon the face of a banshee, a Reaperized asari. The indoctrination process had stretched the flesh and bone of what had formerly been an intelligent and individual being, causing it to tower nearly three meters in height. The wavy cartilage of its head had grown out into spikes, the once-vibrant irises paled to a blue-gray, and fingers of the banshee had elongated into spindly razors, delicate as the wings of a bird. The banshee, true to its name, gave a high-pitched shriek that seemed to disorient the person recording the footage. The monstrosity then darted towards the hapless director, which caused the picture to abruptly tilt and pitch towards the ground. Static briefly fluttered over the screen and Roahn gasped, clutching at her chest as if she imagined the banshee's claws piercing her.

" _All seemed lost_."

Asari artillery were now being shown tearing into Reaper Harvesters, abominations that looked like giant winged insects, but to little effect as the Harvesters would easily dodge the incoming fire at the speed they were travelling. Commandos fired at will behind massive barriers, only for them to fall when brutes charged the gates. One such asari was decapitated by a brute with a swing of a massive arm, leaving the headless body to flop to the ground while the rest of the soldiers screamed and fired, knowing that they had seconds to live before they too were to be slaughtered like animals.

Roahn gulped at the sight, her fingers twisting into knots as she held them near her own neck.

Now routed, all of the screens depicted the asari fleeing up the streets in every direction, desperate to get away from any sign of the Reapers. Scattered machine gun fire sporadically disrupted the shouts, cutting into the instrumental track backing the images up, which was now harshly vibrating with a manipulated and synthetic pulse.

" _But some individuals_ …" the narration whispered as the screens briefly faded to black, _"…never gave a thought towards giving in_."

As the music then rose to a crescendo, switching into a heroic key, Roahn continued to stand, flabbergasted, as a blur of color zoomed by the screen. A man, a human, decked out in a set of black armor, adorned by red and white stripes upon his right arm, vaulted over a barricade, never breaking their stride as they simultaneously grasped a large assault rifle. The look in this man's eyes was fierce, laser focused, as sharp as it could ever be. It encapsulated a lifetime of suppressed anger, now fully susceptible to this moment where he could unleash it all back in kind. The human took up a position, his movements quick and crisp, made possible from years of practice. He raised the rifle to his shoulder, and not even sparing a second, began to lay down a barrage of fire, decimating all of the Reaper forces in his way.

The human in the footage. From the millisecond she had spotted his face, Roahn recognized him. It was a bit odd, seeing him without a beard and with a shaven head, but she knew that stern look anywhere.

" _Dad_ ," Roahn unconsciously blurted out.

Her father. He looked… magnificent. Like a knight in the books that Roahn used to read when she was younger. Confident, strong, purposeful. In the footage, Shepard was barking out orders, keeping a proud stride as he advanced through the streets, weapon in hand. He was always the one leading the charges, placing himself at the forefront of the danger. Roahn watched her father chuck grenades, embark in a running slide to slice a cannibal in half with his omni-blade, and perform a sharpshooting feat against a foe a mile away as casually as drawing a breath.

War and violence apparently came naturally to Shepard, Roahn saw. He was a whirling dervish on the battlefield, always managing to place himself out of harm's reach. He took risks, played with his life, but he always came out on top. Unbridled madness. Or… calculated peril? A genuine commander, through and through. The bloodstained human would down scores of enemies that she saw, tear into the gaping maw of the Reaper horde and rip out the tainted heart of the infection that plagued this galaxy. He did it all with a scowl on his face, and a mouth wide open in a yell that could paralyze demons in their place. By his bullets or by his blade, no one could stand up to him. No one could possibly face down this immortal warrior.

Roahn felt like sinking to the ground in awe. Her heart felt like it was about to beat clean out of her chest. She felt dizzy. Dehydrated. Seeing her dad like this in ways she could never have imagined him before, it was like her entire world was starting to overturn and she was still foolishly trying to cling on for dear life.

The montage of clips went on and on, and the music kept on enunciating the joyous moment whereupon _Commander Shepard_ took his steps onto Thessian soil for the defense of the asari people. Roahn kept silent all the way through, enduring memory after memory of her father cutting a path through the Reaper forces to his overall objective. He did not slow. He did not get hurt. The man seemed to have a limitless supply of adrenaline. His blows could crumble beings. He could outshoot any man in the galaxy. As the camera followed Shepard's march through the city, Roahn found herself completely on edge, bouncing on the tips of her toes as she silently cheered her father on, her hands halfway up in the air as she failed to halt an infectious grin from spreading on her face.

It was only when one of the cameras panned to a new individual did Roahn cease in her reveling.

A shock of black and purple. A blur of a quick, lithe figure. A few inches shorter than Shepard, as portrayed on the screen, their expression not immediately apparent, but all too familiar to Roahn.

Behind a toppled pillar in the film, Shepard crouched down for cover, laser bolts sailing over his head, as the slightly more diminutive figure of Tali'Zorah crouched next to him. In the quarian's hands, she cradled a large shotgun, breathing hard as indicated by the rapid rise and fall of her shoulders, yet she never tore her gaze off of the man she was situated next to. It was obvious, from the positioning of her eyes behind her visor, that she would never tear them away from the man she loved, the one person that she implicitly trusted the most in this disintegrating galaxy.

All alone in the room, Rohan simply watched her parents give a subtle nod to each other before leaping over the barricade to raise hell together, guns blazing.

 _Mother_ , Roahn tried to say, but her throat was so dry that the words would not flow.

The footage impassively painted a portrait of the events exactly as they had happened in real life. There was no obfuscating the truth this time around and the truth was quite simple to the girl: in battle, her parents were _glorious_.

Shepard and Tali made quite the team. If Roahn's father had no trouble taking on an entire crowd of bad guys before, then with Tali at his side, the two were invincible. They never faltered in their advances—at least, that was what the cameras were showing. Their aim was true, their speed unmatched. They could read each other perfectly without needing to call out to the other. These two people, paired together, were a well-oiled machine built entirely around the confidence and faith they had in each other.

And even off the battlefield, it showed.

The footage now switched to a period of downtime, a lull in the fighting. Perhaps this was on another planet, Roahn was too absorbed to catch the narration this time around. She was more interested in scouring the clips for more memories of her parents together.

One particular shot managed to catch Tali and Shepard sitting on a makeshift bench together. The human, still clad in his body armor, looked exhausted from the day's events, his brow crusted with his blood. Tali leaned upon him, her helmeted head lightly resting upon the man's armored shoulder, her arm barely managing to make its way around Shepard's broad shoulders. The two did not look like they were speaking at the moment, but Roahn could tell that, in that scene, they probably had no use for words at all as they were simply enjoying each other's company, despite the madness of the war decimating everything around them.

They were each other's emotional anchor. Their one unyielding constant in a changing galaxy. With each other, the two of them could find some semblance of peace, no matter how small.

Small wonder they never found themselves apart after all this had been finished.

Stars and tender beams flitted across Roahn's visor now. The girl held the universe in her view as she watched her father and her mother together. She succumbed to the wonder and let her arms dangle to her sides as she turned on the spot, every single screen beaming the same images right back at her.

For the first time, she could _see_ her father.

The video then switched off with a snap, after the announcer had bidden everyone farewell and a pleasant day. As there was no one else to file out of the room, Roahn was still transfixed where she stood, head still angled upward, silently pleading for there to be more to the film, for her to get more glimpses.

Anything… just more…

Roahn's neck then gave a slight tickle as she realized that someone was just behind her. Timidly, she turned around, only for her wide eyes to gaze upon her father, who was also looking upwards as to where the multitude of screens had been playing just seconds previously, his mouth a thin line.

Shepard then looked down and bumped his eyebrows, almost as if he had been surprised to see Roahn right in front of him, but that was not the case as Roahn realized that he did so out of mirth. Shepard then barely raised his arm, palm up, for Roahn to take. She obliged right as she took a breath, her three fingers easily being eclipsed by her father's larger appendage.

"It's funny when you see yourself being propped up on a pedestal, especially when you know that you most likely didn't deserve it," Shepard mused as he lightly squeezed his daughter's hand. "If the asari truly knew how I felt, they'd take all of this down."

"No. No they wouldn't," Roahn emphasized as a part of her seemed to reach right out of her body, up towards a rapidly fading Shepard. "After… after what you've done…"

"What I _did_ was kill their countrymen," Shepard grimaced, still transfixing his gaze to the blank theater. "It did not matter if the Reapers had taken them by then. They were living beings, once. And I snuffed them out as carelessly as one would do to an insect. No, if the asari saw my point of view, they'd treat me like a war criminal instead of a hero."

"But…" Roahn could not believe that she was about to say these words out loud as she pleaded, "…you _are_ a hero."

Shepard's answering smile was chilly. "Am I? Or was that title merely bestowed upon me for convenience? It's easier to forgive a 'hero' than a murderer, isn't it?"

"Stop," Roahn spread her arms, pushing herself away from Shepard. "That's not what everyone saw. That's not what _mom_ saw."

Deflated, Shepard gave an idle nod as his gaze fell to the ground. "She… saw more than that in me." With a withering look, Shepard reached out his hand again, beckoning his daughter closer. "People want to see me as an icon, but I neither need nor want that. I especially don't ever want _you_ to think that, Roahn, no matter how tantalizing it might be."

Any other day and Roahn would have agreed wholeheartedly, but there was something holding her tongue back this time around, something keeping her from saying something that she might regret. Wordless, she instead nodded and took a step forward once more, taking Shepard's hand again.

"I've killed people," Shepard softly told his daughter. "Far too many to count. There's no getting around this. I shouldn't be rewarded for such a thing. I merely did my duty—what I felt was right. If I had to make the same choice, I would do it again. But… I wish I did not have to. No matter how lofty the praise gets, it will never answer for the things that I have done in my life. That's what people can't understand, Roahn. They would rather see the good in people and deliberately blind themselves to the bad."

Now the frosty exterior began to warm as Roahn's helpless gaze began to melt the ice surrounding Shepard's heart. He gave a tiny smile and patted at Roahn's helmeted head affectionately.

"Maybe…" he mused, "…maybe I've been keeping too much of the good from you, huh?"

Mutely, Roahn gave a nervous nod.

Shepard continued to smile as he now took Roahn's hand, leading her out of the room by his side. "But that's what I'm trying to change. With you, I still have a chance."

The two of them, the sole occupants of the hallway, trudged along the carpet which silenced their footsteps, the two of them encased in darkness as the light from both ends warred against each other, with the vacuum of shadow in the middle.

"Come," Shepard whispered. "There's someone I'd like you to meet."

* * *

Garrus was waiting for them by the entrance of the next room, arms crossed over his chest.

"She's nearly finished," he said as Shepard and Roahn approached, not by the way of chastisement but merely to state a fact. Shepard nodded at his friend and gestured for him to lead the way through the doorway.

The next room was a very compact amphitheater, filled to the brim of young and eager-looking asari who stared transfixed upon the central platform upon all which the benches were angled towards. Garrus and Shepard immediately started scouting for seats as they stood upon the top level, almost as if they were petrified by walking into such a crowded area. After none of the bystanders chose to tear their gaze away from the person in the middle of the room who was currently speaking, the two men sort of accepted that they had gotten away with crashing the presentation. All that was left was to find a place to park their hides for a few minutes.

There was a blank area on the top row, right up against the wall, large enough for three people. Shepard, Roahn, and Garrus immediately helped themselves and edged along the wall behind the people seated in the row in front. With no place to sit down, unfortunately, the three of them simply relegated themselves to lean against the wall, trying to keep as silent as possible.

The steps of the auditorium were steep, so it was easy to see over the heads of the people sitting in front and towards whatever they were looking at. There was only one person occupying the center dais on the ground. This person, like the majority of the clientele, was an asari. They wore what appeared to be an elaborate coat of a firm and shiny material that was dyed red and black—an emphasis on function rather than fashion, clearly. A few pieces of facial jewelry, also black, were stuck to the forehead of the asari, breaking up the otherwise smooth pallor of her face. Glass cases containing what appeared to be ancient artifacts flanked the asari on all sides, and still renderings of various locations were constantly being beamed up onto a large screen behind her with text at the bottom of the slides indicating where these locations actually were within the known galaxy.

The asari held a firm command over the room, with everyone hanging onto her every word. She spoke with confidence and poise, and every hand gesture had been meticulously planned out beforehand. Nothing was spontaneous with her movements or her words.

She literally had not changed at all, Shepard figured to himself.

"…for at first glance at what the Protheans were able to accomplish, it is easy to assume that they were capable of not only great feats of innovation, but great feats of empathy as well," the asari was saying in her cool and controlled voice, her eyes casually scanning the room and enjoying the amount of attention she was being inundated with. "After all, this was a claim that many archeologists assumed, at the time, to be the truth. It seemed like the obvious conclusion. Integrated and compatible technology being present at all dig sites? The evidence of beacons being planted with the intent to disperse large amounts of information in the blink of an eye? The Protheans, to us, sounded almost like they had figured everything out, that they had managed to place the good of the collective over the good of the individual. We had little information to go on at the time, but there was little evidence contradicting any of our findings. As you heard earlier as to what Prothean civilization was _actually_ like, you can imagine that there was a fair share of embarrassment within our profession once the true nature of our galactic predecessors finally came to light. We're a humble bunch but we still get a little miffed when all of us have been told that our theories were way off the mark."

Polite chatter rose from the crowd and the asari paused a beat for effect.

"She's drawn some fans," Garrus whispered to Shepard

"But I've always thought back to a quote from a human who lived many centuries ago by the name of Igor Stravinsky. He was a musician, not an archaeologist, but he had an interesting insight into the subject that… I've always thought to be quite poignant and that taught me to keep an open mind when dealing with criticism: ' _The past slips from our grasp. It leaves us only scattered things. The bond that united them eludes us. Our imagination usually fills in the void by making use of preconceived theories. Archaeology then does not supply us with—_ '"

The asari stalled mid-speech as her gaze had finally lifted up to the top row, whereupon she instantly locked eyes with the only human in the room. No doubt he was easily spotted in this place. Recognition instantly registered in both of their eyes, merely solidified when Shepard allowed a smile, visible even from the dais down below.

The asari started to stammer, caught off guard. The first cracks of the day. Her eyes swept back and forth as she tried to regain her train of thought.

"'— _w-with… with… with certitudes… b-but rather with vague hypotheses_.'" The asari stifled laughter of her own and cleared her throat, trying to keep her facial expression neutral as she continued with the quote. " _'And in the shade of these hypotheses some artists are content to dream, considering them less as scientific facts than as sources of inspiration_.'" The asari then clapped her hands together once, taking in the energy of the room as she took a final deep breath. "I hope you all will then understand how important it is to keep an open mind both in the classroom and in the field. Also, perhaps you will now realize just how much of an exciting time this is now that we're finally making the most headway into our search for answers within the Prothean civilization. Thank you all for your time."

The lights dimmed briefly to raucous applause. Up at the top, Garrus clapped similarly, but with a cheeky look on his face as he did so. Shepard, meanwhile, was still staring down at the asari as the lights came back up, as the asari continued to stare right back at him, not at all distracted by the standing ovation she was getting.

"She finally got the recognition she wanted," Shepard said to Garrus when there was a lull in the clapping.

"Wait," Roahn said next to him, tilting her head. "I know her. That… is that…?"

Shepard gave a pensive nod. "Yes. Yes it is, Roahn."

The asari down below was now getting swarmed by her admirers and well-wishers, all exclaiming, " _Dr. T'Soni! Dr. T'Soni!_ " The infectious crowd surrounded her, shining eyes and dripping with adoration. They bombarded her with questions, with requests for photos, or for an endorsement in the form of her signature. True to her nature, she calmly complied with each and every last request, but her eyes never took their focus off of the people waiting on the top row of the amphitheater, wisely waiting their turn until the crowd had been sated.

Little by little, as the minutes passed, the horde began to gradually disperse. All the asari were either too star struck or aimlessly chattering with each other that they all failed to notice that three living legends were in the room at this moment, not just one. Apparently Shepard and Garrus' luck was still on a streak, as no one had even spared so much as a glance in their direction as the crowd finally filed out of the room, leaving just the three of them alone with the asari presenter.

The asari began ascending the stairs at the same time that Shepard started to descend them. They both met in the middle and the asari excitedly threw her arms around Shepard, her face positively beaming. Shepard gratefully returned the hug and provided a laugh of his own, followed by a slight choking sound as the asari squeezed perhaps a little too hard in her enthusiasm.

Breaking the hug, Liara T'Soni placed a hand on Shepard's bearded cheek, warmly grinning as she struggled to contain herself in the moment, clearly having been caught off guard from this impromptu arrival.

"All those years, I thought…" Liara whispered numbly. "I thought I would be waiting far longer to get even a _glimpse_ of you again. I can't believe this is real." Liara shook her head for a moment, clearly needed a moment to get her bearings before she could not resist any longer and gave Shepard one more hug. "Shepard… it's so good to see you again."

"As it is for me, Liara," Shepard said as he patted the asari's back in a friendly manner before breaking away for a second time. "You haven't aged a day."

That was all cheek. Asari could live to be over 1000 years of age. A mere twelve years would have never even registered upon Liara, who was only a youthful 121, and not even close to approaching her matron stage.

The asari's lips rose upwards sadly as Liara tenderly plucked at Shepard's beard. "Whereas you have aged quite a bit. I can only imagine what these past few years have done to you."

Shepard took the last comment in stride. "As best as I could, Liara. I've been trying to hold on."

"I know," Liara nodded. "You have _tried_ more than anyone I've ever known. That has to count for something." Shifting her eyes to the side after giving Shepard a slow, respectful blink of her eyes, Liara smirked as she spotted Garrus standing behind the human. "I wish I could say that I'm surprised to see you, Garrus, but…"

"You know me," Garrus shrugged as he stepped forward and the two embraced quickly, "you can't keep me away from something like this."

"I'd be a fool to think otherwise," Liara said before catching the eye of the youngest member of the party.

Suddenly overcome by a base and vibrant emotion, Liara knelt down as she beckoned Roahn closer. The girl, timid all over again, crept closer to the asari, studying every detail about the woman and cataloging it against the mental picture she had been compiling of the famed doctor for years. Roahn's head was summarily reeling, now that she was face to face with _two_ of her idols, members of the Normandy crew.

Liara held out her hands for Roahn to grasp. The quarian girl's limbs were shaking as she raised them in mid-air, stilled only when the asari curled her fingers around them.

Smiling warmly, Liara could not hold in her longing sigh. "I knew I would meet you some day, Roahn. It's something that has been on my mind for the past nine years." Liara dipped her head, but her eyes never lost their concentration, peering deep into Roahn's own gaze to the point where Roahn swore that Liara was looking _past_ her visor and directly into her own soul. "It's… uncanny."

" _Wh_ - _What's_ uncanny?" Roahn asked in a hoarse voice.

Liara's beam was one of delight.

"How much of your mother I see in you."

* * *

"So," Shepard said after he took a sip of his drink, "you're a _curator_ now?"

Liara picked at her food with a sly grin. "Did you think I'd be continuing my broker life after everything had calmed down?"

Garrus answered in Shepard's stead. " _I_ did."

"It did seem to be something that you were quite heavily involved in, at the time," Shepard added.

" _At the time_ ," Liara pointed out as she punctuated her words by jabbing her fork in the air. "It was always going to be a stopgap for me. Just a slight deviation in my career."

"Emphasis on _slight_ ," Garrus muttered into his beer with amusement.

Liara shot the turian a look but all three of them resorted to light chuckles as they continued to eat their food.

With Liara's presentation over and done with, and also taking into consideration that all four people in the party were rather hungry, Liara had led everyone over to the gallery cafeteria to get some food and drinks. It had taken everyone about fifteen minutes to decide on what they wanted, but when all had their food sorted out, Liara made sure to snag a table upon the gallery balcony, letting everyone bask in the balmy sun of the bright Thessian day.

The view from the gallery overlooked a significant portion of the city several levels below. The balcony itself was lined with hanging gardens that overflowed with multicolored flowers, springy green ferns, and thin looping vines. The sky was bright and spotted with clouds, occasionally being broken up by skycars that would fly by a couple times a minute. It was past the usual lunch rush on Thessia, so Shepard and everyone else had the balcony all to themselves. They had also found a perfect table big enough for four, and the seats were plush and springy as well.

No one seemed to be having any complaints about the meals they had chosen. Shepard was not all that familiar with how cafeteria food from a museum should taste, but he had to give the cooks some credit here, they could make a decent eggs benedict. In all actuality, he was more worried if this place had anything for Roahn, given that Thessia was not a planet completely suitable for people of dextro chirality. However, he was relieved to find out that the cafeteria did have a stock of dextro food items that Roahn could eat, and more importantly, could be sterilized. Roahn had then picked out for herself a tube filled with an assortment of chilled fruits and nuts, and had been happily popping them in her mouth through a slit at the base of her helmet. The girl must have been starving, Shepard noticed. She had gone through the tube like a maniac, judging from how rapidly the food contents were disappearing, the crunching noises she was emitting, and the rather content gaze she had upon her veiled face as she ate.

Shepard looked in all directions before leaning forward to speak. "I'm assuming that the administrators of this place are unfamiliar of your past as the Shadow Broker?"

Liara laughed, appreciating Shepard's attempt at discretion. "They have no reason to suspect anything. I'm also content to keep it that way."

"So, what? You just walked away from the entire thing?"

"Not quite. I made sure to tactically disband the organization piecemeal. I divested some of the assets of the Broker and distributed them to the still standing Council governments. The rest I deleted. Being the Shadow Broker was an important duty that I'll never regret performing. It's just that… I was always interested in archaeology far more than trying to blackmail individuals."

Shepard made a gesture with his glass. "Hence the curator position."

Liara gave a mischievous smile. "The Athame Foundation came up with quite a good collection of old Prothean pieces over the years—the most extensive collection on the planet, in fact. I guess they must have noticed me after my latest book deal and offered me the position of administrator here. It gives me something to do and I get a modest source of income out of it. Nothing outrageous, but it handles living expenses well."

Honestly, out of the three veterans at the table, Liara was the most individually wealthy out of all of them. Having had a vested interest in Protheans for decades, Liara had always hoped to reveal a new chapter of the extinct race that would not only get her name in the history books, but would also bring her a fair share of recognition as well. It had been a sore spot for Liara, early in her career, when her hypothesis of there being a pattern of cyclical extinction in the galaxy had been shrugged off on the account of her being fairly young compared to the average professional in the archaeological realm. Stung by rejection after rejection, Liara had hoped that she would be offered the chance to make her own mark, regardless of how old she was. She had been confident about her conclusions for decades, but would not get a chance to prove her theories correct until her path caused her to collide with the most unexpected of people: Shepard.

Inevitably, once she had been working alongside Shepard on his many missions, such a chance to prove herself right had practically been deposited directly into her lap almost immediately, when she and everyone else in the human's team discovered the existence of the Reapers and the fact that they were the cause of each extinction cycle. But perhaps the most important discovery Liara would take part in finding came in the form of Javik, an actual Prothean who had survived the last Reaper cycle tens of thousands of years ago. Stuck in a cryopod for all that time, Javik had been patiently waiting to be revived so that he could integrate himself in the next cycle and be unleashed against the Reapers once more, to take revenge against the machines that had executed his people 50,000 years in the past.

Obviously having an actual living Prothean in close proximity was an opportunity that Liara had been salivating over. The Protheans had been extinct for millennia—no one had ever assumed the possibility of getting to meet a live member of the species before! Liara would be the first to properly get a firm understanding of Prothean society through Javik, and although the Prothean was a bit on the blunt side and had the tendency to rub everyone the wrong way through his seemingly uncaring actions or words, he and Liara had eventually nailed out a clumsy sort of understanding between them. It was that understanding that enabled Liara to write a pair of books: one a biography of Javik's life titled _Journeys with the Prothean,_ and the other a definitive codex of Protheans entitled simply, _Prothean_. The pair of books became best sellers and won multiple awards, making Liara completely financially sound and opening all the doors in her profession that had been previously locked away from her.

"How _is_ Javik doing these days?" Garrus asked as he finished knocking back his beer.

"Javik?" Liara repeated, followed by a shrug. "He does what he wants to these days. He's not exactly the sort of person that likes to keep people updated of his location. I think he secretly thinks that people are intercepting his communications to plot his assassination. He's always been paranoid about that. In any case, last I heard he was taking a brief stay on the hanar homeworld. They have the ruins of a prothean temple there that he wanted to visit, plus the hanar treat him very well, from what I understand."

"I would have liked to have met him," Roahn interjected with a tiny sigh as she set her empty food tube down on the table.

Liara gave a sympathetic look towards the girl. "I'm sure that you'll get the chance soon enough. Well, once your father finishes with this unpleasant business of Chimera, of course."

The girl fidgeted in her seat as her fingers twisted together. "I read your books, you know," she said to Liara.

"Really?" Liara bumped her eyebrows, looking at Shepard briefly for confirmation. "What did you think of them? Were you able to understand them well enough?"

"I got them, yes," Roahn said, deflecting the unintentional condescension from Liara with grace. "Though I liked _Journeys of the Prothean_ a lot more. It had a more personal touch to it than _Prothean_."

Liara chuckled. "I'm not surprised. _Prothean_ was designed to be… more of a denser tome. It wasn't an easy book to write, nor was it really meant to be read in a single sitting."

"I did like in your book when you described how you became interested in archaeology. That your mother caught you digging in your backyard for ruins. I also thought that you had a very… romantic way of describing Prothean society. You made them seem very fascinating in an alien sort of way, like their ways of life were initially beyond our understanding at first."

Liara dipped her head modestly. "Yes, well, that was one of the things that critics jumped all over me on at first with _Journeys_. They said I might have been a little too saccharine in my tone. I probably did have everything through a maudlin lens when I was interviewing Javik, because my interest was piqued so heavily. It was… hard to resist the appeal and it showed in my writing. Though I would have been impressed if anyone else had such an opportunity and that their excitement was somehow _not_ reflected in their accounts."

"I don't know, I still liked it. I thought your personal connection between your life and that of Javik's was nicely paralleled in some of your passages. Like… his own experiences with fighting in the war in the last cycle and the similarities that you faced with this one."

Liara leaned back in her chair, her smile unable to be wiped from her face. "Actually, that was sort of the point with _Journeys_. I wanted to introduce readers to this unfamiliar race, but to not overwhelm them with information. The… overwhelming part was what _Prothean_ was for. I intentionally wrote _Journeys_ to have a sort of conversational flow to it, to tell a vibrant story by outlining similarities between our races and that of the collective Prothean race. Truth be told, Roahn, _Journeys_ is actually my favorite of the two as well." Trying to hide her astonishment, Liara looked over at Shepard as she patted Roahn's arm. "Shepard, your daughter… she's unbelievably sharp!"

Shepard nodded in agreement. "I think we both know where _that_ trait came from," he said and Roahn beamed.

"Extraordinary," Liara laughed before leaning forward slightly. "So, what are your plans after this? I'm going to take a guess that you're not planning on staying on Thessia indefinitely."

"No, sadly we're not," Shepard concurred as he gave Roahn's back a pat. "You see, I'm trying to show Roahn around the galaxy a bit now that we're… on the run, just to help her understand her family a bit more. Also, I hoped that we would get the chance to meet you guys, because… well, you're part of the family that she has, honestly. I didn't think that it would be fair to keep that from her for long."

Liara and Garrus both looked touched from Shepard's admission and Roahn also felt a sizable pang in her chest. It was still so weird hearing her father speak so candidly that she was still having trouble adjusting to it.

"As for where we're going next," Shepard continued, "I thought we might swing by Tuchanka for a bit. Say hello to yet another old friend."

"Tuchanka?" Roahn gaped. "You mean… Wrex? We're going to see Wrex?"

Shepard did not answer his daughter right away, as he still continued to appraise Liara as he spoke. "I figure that we'll be relatively safe there, like we are here. I'm just hoping that this whole nonsense blows over or at the very least there will be an opening for me to take care of this Chimera business once and for all. I'd imagine that Wrex would give us a warm welcome—he'd certainly love to show us how things are going on the homefront. Perhaps he could even withstand any questions Roahn has for him. He's always had a soft spot for children."

Liara looked rather giddy at the news and she played with the straw in her drink before she next spoke. "I'm not usually one to impose at a time like this, and I'm almost hesitant to ask-,"

Shepard just shrugged as he pushed his finished lunch tray to the side. "I probably already know what you're going to say, Liara. Might as well fire away."

The asari paused for a few seconds, as if testing the magnitude of her request and whether or not it would be prudent to voice it anyway.

"In that case… would you mind if I came along with you to Tuchanka?"

"Why not?" Shepard said immediately, a vague hint of intrigue lining his gaze. "The more the merrier. Besides, one afternoon is not enough for us to catch up. By all means, you're more than welcome to join us. It'll be just like old times."

This was just getting better and better for Roahn. Now she had Garrus and Liara both in close proximity! For a few days, at least! One a noted soldier, the other a graceful biotic. And of course, she had just learned that she was about to visit the esteemed krogan overlord. If a maniacal cyborg had not been chasing her and her dad, this week would have definitely averaged a net positive.

In any case, once Liara and Garrus had risen from the table to refill their drinks, Shepard scooted closer to Roahn, a little more happiness on his face infecting it this time around. A stark contrast from the morose man who had been living on Rannoch with her for her entire life.

"You've opened the floodgates now," he mused out loud as he watched Liara turn the corner towards the cafeteria. "Once you get her going on Prothean history, there's not much you can do to stop it."

"I think I can handle it," Roahn said confidentially with a grin. "Liara always seemed like the sort of person that I could talk to for hours."

"Be careful, your wish just might come true," Shepard lightly elbowed Roahn in the ribs, who laughed and shoved his arm right back.

"You've known her almost as long as mother," Roahn then stated.

"Just about. Liara, Garrus, Ashley, Kaidan, Wrex, and… Tali. The original team. Comrades and friends, all. At one point, we were adamant that we would die for each other. In Ashley's case, she was true to her word. I was… I was just glad that I never had to bury the rest of them, despite there being plenty more friends that were killed before the end."

"It turned out well for most, didn't it?"

"For the ones who lived, yeah. You've seen how Garrus and Liara are doing. Kaidan's still got a strong career in the Alliance. Wrex is now practically the ruler of all krogan. And Tali… well, settling down with me was as perfect of an ending that she could ever come up with. I don't think she had any other wish that she wanted to achieve."

Shepard folded his hands together as he looked past the balcony, past the curtains of hanging moss and the straddled veins of traffic in the sky, past the curved spires of the rebuilt offices and apartments and back out to the blackened landscape they had previously passed over in coming here. Through a thin haze, near the boundary where the land curled and crackled, Shepard's eyes narrowed in that direction, his breathing thin through his nose.

"There was another reason why I brought you here to Thessia, Roahn," Shepard said as he pointed a finger towards a towering building off in the distance, flanked by stone sculptures of sleek asari representations. "You see that structure over there?"

Roahn squinted as she turned around in her seat and leaned forward. "Yes."

"That's the temple of Athame," Shepard explained. "That building is one of the last few places on Thessia that stands to honor the asari goddess Athame. The doctrine surrounding that particular goddess fell out of favor centuries ago, but the asari kept it here out of respect… so the story went. We can't go over there now as it's heavily under military control—has been for the past twelve years. In fact, it's that particular building that is part of the reason why I'm in trouble with Chimera in the first place."

"Why?" was the only natural question Roahn could come up with.

Shepard's answering look was grim. "There was some stuff that Liara left out of her books for a very good reason. Knowledge that could definitely turn the tide of public opinion against her race. I think you should understand why she chose to omit what I'm about to tell you, and why this information got me in this hot water. You see, Roahn, what Liara deliberately did not mention in her accounts was that the Protheans had long ago judged the asari to have potential as the dominant race in the next cycle. It was the Protheans who created the idea of a goddess for the asari to worship, Athame, and it was them who genetically manipulated the asari to have a natural ability to create biotics."

"So… that's why all asari are biotically active?" Roahn was amazed. "All because the Protheans meddled with them, somehow?"

"Genetic research has tampered all of us in some way, Roahn. It's just that the asari were selected to receive a bit more help in that matter. But the asari's inherent biotic ability was not the only mark the Protheans left behind. No, they actually hid much more. You see, the Protheans left a _beacon_ behind. Here, on Thessia. A working piece of their technology containing vast amounts of information that still remained active for millennia. And until just a few years ago, _only_ the asari knew about it. It had been kept secret for who knows how long as they plundered its contents, giving them the advantage of knowledge. They had no choice but to finally reveal its existence to an outsider, to me, when the galaxy was crumbling down around their ears and they had reached the limits of their desperation." Shepard nodded again in the direction of the shrine. "The temple was built around the beacon, to keep it a closely guarded mystery."

Roahn's head was spinning and she struggled to make sense of it all. "But… the Council… the Council declared so long ago that withholding Prothean technology was illegal. How could…?"

Shepard parted his hands as a half-sort of shrug. "Who do you think _wrote_ that particular section of the Council charter? The _asari_ , that's who. They had already found the beacon long before the Council was even an idea. They thought that they could keep it under wraps. The asari never did believe me about the danger the Reapers were to us until the very end of the imminent invasion. They felt they had no other option but to disclose the beacon to me when Thessia started to come under fire, and if they had not, everyone in the galaxy would be dead. But therein lies the problem."

"What to do with the knowledge of the beacon afterward," Roahn realized.

"Precisely," Shepard indicated proudly. "Very good, Roahn. So yes, you can imagine that revealing the beacon put the asari in a very awkward position. After all, the Citadel Council was formed with one of its tenets specifically designating that all Prothean knowledge is to be shared amongst the races. The asari had been particularly fastidious in following this rule, or so we thought. You can go back to the records and find no less than several dozen times the asari have spearheaded investigations and calls for censure on any species that has dared to keep even a tiny bit of Prothean technology for themselves. With this beacon, the asari now look like the galaxy's biggest hypocrites, right? And what's worse, the fact that this particular beacon held information that was specific towards enacting the Reapers' defeat makes the asari look even worse. What would have happened if they had never revealed the existence of this beacon at all? Or rather, could we have stopped this war a lot sooner had we known of the beacon from the beginning?"

The girl could only rub at her arm, amazed. "I… I didn't know. What happened afterward, dad? How did people react when you told them of the beacon?"

"Told?" Shepard politely snorted before he shook his head, regretful and languid. "Perhaps that's part of the problem. I never said anything about it in an official forum."

Dumbstruck, it took a while for Roahn to respond. "Keelah, dad. Why would you not tell anyone?"

"Because I felt there was no point. Telling people about the beacon would only have made things worse after the war. Think about it, we had just come out on top from the greatest threat anyone in this galaxy had ever known, and if I had gone and started telling people to make inquiries, that would only accomplish nothing but more chaos. The asari would be disgraced at the wrong time; their home planet had been decimated, billions of their countrymen killed. Why pour salt in the wound by threatening them with political repercussions now? They broke the law, yes, but they have also paid for their hubris. In the period after the war where reconstruction was paramount, where our interspecies cooperation was most prized, it did not make sense to suddenly tear all of it apart for the sake of… what, some senators trying to leverage power in the wake of the asari's collapse? Why should only some benefit while many more would be hurt by such a revelation?"

"You're talking about _cooperation_ ," Roahn said. "You're saying that… that you withheld this—the beacon—for… for the greater good."

"We _all_ kept quiet," Shepard muttered softly. "Me, my team, and Hackett. We all came to the same conclusion in the end. Staying silent was the only way to preserve galactic peace. But that meant that there still were gaps in the narrative, gaps that people like Raynor Larsen have noticed. He's the caliber of person that would stop at nothing to learn the truth, even though it will hurt more people than it will help. He's one of the few that would stand to benefit from making such information public. For the sake of preserving the status quo, I specifically never mentioned it."

In shock, Roahn stepped from her chair, eyes wide and aghast. "And what did _mom_ think of this? What did she want?"

Shepard raised a hand to calm his daughter. "She wanted to tell the whole galaxy at first, but I ended up talking her out of it."

"Well… I think you were wrong."

Shepard pursed his lips as the girl across from him stood defiant. His fingers began to ache again and a building headache started to press upon the back of his skull.

"I'm not trying to tell you what to think," he said evenly. "I just want you to understand why I made the choices I did."

"But what if you _had_ said something?" the girl emphasized in her horror. "Would we be safe now? There would be no reason for someone to chase us, right?" Roahn then licked her lips as she fumbled for a breath. "Would mom still be _alive?_ "

Immediately, Shepard tensed like he had been hit by a bolt of lightning. "That has nothing to do with what happened, young lady."

"But what if it did? Would we have been stuck on Rannoch still? We could have gotten mom to a… to a better doctor when she got sick! We wouldn't have had to sit around and… and…"

Roahn trembled and her words soon dissolved in her mouth. She leaned against her chair for support, suddenly drained. Shepard saw this change in Roahn and he reached out a hand to gently grasp her shoulder, but the girl edged just out of reach, her gaze suddenly fierce.

"Roahn," Shepard sighed as his arm, stung by denial, drooped next to his body. "I told you that you would know everything about me. I'm only trying to keep my word."

The shaking quarian girl could only muster enough strength to form a barrier of rejection around herself. "I… I'm not sure I really want to know anymore." Turning on her heel, the conversation finished, Roahn walked away from Shepard to make her way to a lower level on the balcony. She sat herself down upon the steps so that she could watch the city below her, but now being well out of Shepard's range.

Shepard took the hint. He was not going to force Roahn to listen to him if she did not want to listen at all. But still, her departure had felt like someone had stuck him with a butcher knife. He sighed and used an arm to prop his chin up as he daydreamed. There was just no easy path to victory this time around. Everything he was doing was scrutinized, meticulously analyzed and interpreted. Every tiny mistake amplified, ready to be thrown back in his face.

And the person doing all of this to him was his own daughter.

But how could he find a way to please Roahn? Or was he just doomed to fail and he just did not know it yet? Was he that much of an idiot not to realize that he had been sliding on a downward slope this whole time? Perhaps Roahn's acceptance of him was a goal that had been unattainable from the start while he wallowed in his own spiral of despair and confusion. Yet he could not bring himself to lie to Roahn. Lionizing himself was not an option—he had specifically made a promise that he would bring the truth, the entire truth, to Roahn. If he let even a tiny lie slip by, that was it. The game would be over. She would shut him out forever and he would never get another crack at it again.

"Tali, I could use your help right now," Shepard muttered as he closed his eyes respectfully. "I need to reach our daughter. I need… you. But… I can't reach you either."

Then, even on a clear Thessian day, atop this balcony, Shepard's mind ran away with him once more, sucking him into a vortex of his own creation, populated by objects manifested purely through his consciousness.

Another memory. This one pure.

Shepard did not resist as he willingly let himself be carried off, away into his fantasy.

Where _she_ still lived.

 _There were many places Shepard could let his mind wander to. The day he first met Tali. The day she showed him her face for what had been the first, but certainly not last, time. The day of his wedding. The day Roahn was born. Yet the central focus of his reminiscence pulled him in a certain direction, one whereupon he could still recall the physical sensations of his wife. Sight, smell, sound, taste, and touch. Nerves all ablaze, searing at the maximum._

 _A moment where he could truly feel Tali._

 _And when he opened his eyes, there she was, framed perfectly in his head, all exactly as he wanted. Unmasked. Bare. Heartfelt smile. His name on her lips. Shepard could feel Tali's fingers digging into the flesh of his shoulder passionately. He heard her cry out in pleasure, causing the primal part of him to deeply respond. Her taste was on his tongue, still lingering and unwilling to depart. In the moment, he groaned, taken aback by the sheer agony that was his own earnest expression of joy._

 _Tali's hands slid across Shepard's bare chest, her fingers groping endlessly for purchase but still she endured in the torturous slide, relishing the deliberate motions of her body. The room swirled into focus as the two, stark naked, moved in tandem upon a bed, the springs creaking gently in time to the rhythm they had set. Next to the bed, a fire crackled past a hearth, creating an aura of warmth and a wheat glow to cast upon the room. Outside the window, the sun had set many minutes ago. The sky was the color of a deep and cavernous lake. The air of the bedroom was musky with love. Quarian and human groped and kissed the other in a fervor. Their minds swam._

 _Straddling Shepard, Tali rose herself up to her full height momentarily to brush a stray strand of her hair out of her eyes. Lying prostrate on his back below her, Shepard could only look on endearingly as his eyes feasted on his wife's form. Tali was still in great shape. The gray of her skin shone with a milky glow in the muted lighting. Her abdomen was well toned and muscular, forming a perfect "V" just above her groin. Touching her upon her flat stomach felt like touching warm marble. The bottom of her rib cage was just barely outlined by her skin, heaving with her lungs. Her breasts were perfect, her nipples round and erect from lust._

 _Then there was her face… her face._

 _Thin, unmarred, a band of freckles dotted underneath her eyes. Her irises glowed from within, iridescent and ethereal, but if Shepard looked carefully, the edges were barely marked by rings of caramel hues. Tali's hair was short and wavy, barely dropping beyond her skull. Sweat clung to her brow and a brief trail of saliva dribbled from the corner of her mouth, which she wiped away with a deep breath._

 _Tali was the first quarian Shepard had ever seen unmasked. The only quarian, to be precise. Up until the point where he had finally seen her, Shepard had never been concerned as to how Tali would appear underneath her enviro-suit, but when she had finally worked up the courage to show him, everything he had seen was a delight to his eyes._

 _Her strong body, lightly scarred, still taut after years of peace. Confident in the wake of her illness. Fearless against her unseen foe. One would never know she was ailing._

 _It was hard for Shepard to not be transfixed by such beauty and bravery._

 _Writhing atop him, Tali ground her hips into Shepard, producing a deep moan from her throat. She threw her head back, momentarily paralytic, as the electric shocks of delight shot through her spine. Regaining her wits, she repositioned herself, her eyes focusing again in time for her to submit to her inclinations and to lay herself flat atop her husband. Their lips furiously locked in a passionate kiss. Their tongues battled, cries were muffled. Their bellies brushed. Tali's breasts mashed against Shepard's chest and she still continued to thrust upon him, helpless in a hurricane of desire._

 _As perfect of an evening as either one of them could envision._

 _Tonight had been the culmination of months upon months of waiting. It was a particular milestone in the timeline of Tali's treatment, ever since she had undergone minor amounts of therapy to combat her illness. For tonight was the first time Shepard and Tali were making love since she had been diagnosed._

 _Knowing that action was crucial, Tali had taken to the treatment right away. There had been quite a rapid improvement in her overall health over the passing months, to both her and Shepard's relief. The entire regimen had not even taken as big of a toll on her as she had expected, which had been another unexpected benefit. Throughout that time though, Tali willingly kept her suit on, especially skittish at the prospect of chancing her wellness during such a critical period of recovery. Shepard had been gracious enough to accept this, let alone accept it without hesitation, for he was not all that disappointed in Tali's choice to keep herself contained until further notice. Being upset at such a decision would be the most selfish thing that Shepard could possibly imagine him performing._

 _Their decision to have sex tonight was not something that had been spontaneous. A lot had planning had gone into making this night perfect. This day had been marked on their schedule for weeks. A nice dinner had been prepared, Roahn had been put to sleep early, and Shepard had even gone to the trouble of lighting a fire in the fireplace. Tali loved watching the wood logs crackle and pop in the fierce heat, her body jumping every time a branch snapped, only for Shepard to hug her tighter. The atmosphere of the room had been so cozy that Tali could probably have gone the entire night without needing to make love and would have been entirely comfortable in any case._

 _But… inevitably, there had still been a hunger festering within her that yearned to be sated._

 _After lying upon the bed for an hour, being warmed by the fire, both still completely clad in their clothes as Tali reclined with her back to Shepard's chest, it seemed like neither one wanted to disrupt the serenity of the moment. But Tali would be the one to get antsy first._

 _Turning her body as best she could, she met her husband's gaze as her limpid eyes bred excitement and flight. She did not mince words this time around. "Want to have sex?" was her only question._

 _Tickled by her boldness, Shepard just gave a broad grin. "Sure," was his simple reply._

 _With what had to be a smug look underneath her visor, Tali had abruptly risen from the bed and glided over to the bathroom, making sure to shut the door behind her. Temporarily alone, Shepard stripped down to his underwear and sat at the edge of the bed as he waited for his wife to reappear._

 _A few minutes later and Tali seemed to float out to greet her husband, her bright smile already lighting up the very room she was in._

 _Shepard's jaw fell open._

 _As she strode back into the bedroom, Tali had on a teasing look upon her face, simultaneously eager and bashful as she walked in to savor Shepard's undoubtedly dumbfounded reaction. Her laugher merely brightened as she found her husband's face undeniably hilarious as she fully stepped into the bedroom._

 _Tali was now stark naked, completely bare, except for a few trappings deliberately left upon her. A few of her ceremonial belts still loosely looped around her thin waist, slipping ever so slightly downward with each gentle step she took, and her sehni was draped above her head, shawling her hair up and letting only her face be revealed. She had done this completely on purpose, to intensify the erotic nature of this night, to increase her allure to the human who continued to stare dumbly at her nude body._

 _Slowly sashaying her way over to where Shepard sat, Tali let her hands seductively run up her sides, over her flat belly, squeezing her breasts tauntingly, and up to her face. The belts finally dropped from her waist, fluttering over her strong thighs. Tali then lightly tipped her sehni off her face, trailing it behind her back, and she shook her head out to let her hair flow free._

 _Transfixed, Shepard had been still as a rock the entire time, watching his wife shed the last vestiges of her clothes, all for him. Shaking off his sudden apathy as a sudden mania gripped him, Shepard reached out, callused palms coming into contact with softened skin, and lightly pulled his wife toward him._

 _With a laugh, Tali pushed Shepard down and fell atop of him._

 _The next few minutes became nothing but a constant tangle of skin and pent-up hunger. Shepard and Tali's mouths found each other gleefully and they proceeded to explore the other with their fingers and eventually their tongues and lips. Shepard's boxers had been quickly discarded in a ragged pile in the corner of the room as the interlaced couple tumbled this way and that, eyes tightly shut as they held each other as they kissed. So long it had been without anything standing in between them. So long had they waited. It was time to make up for all those opportunities lost._

 _In her haze, Tali was already panting hard as she struggled to take in the feel of her husband again. She let her mouth wander to his chin, his throat, and to his chest. She lightly bit him, nibbling with her teeth, enjoying the slight reactions he gave. She teased him relentlessly, her hands drifting downward and playing with him, coaxing his rabid desire out of him. Tali grinned evilly as she saw Shepard make a strained face and she knew he was now struggling to contain himself, a desperate desire take things slow and make everything last._

 _But her multi-pronged assault would prove to be too much for him, as Shepard would soon grasp Tali and turn her over onto her back in an explosive maneuver, causing her to squeal in glee, helplessly turned on from her husband's sudden savagery._

 _Shepard growled as he ran his tongue along Tali's throat, the touch along Tali's skin electric and sizzling. She moaned huskily, unable to stop herself. Shepard had grinned at that, for he knew that any sort of stimulus upon Tali's hyper-sensitive skin would be amplified tenfold compared to what he would experience._

 _He continued his loving work._

 _Tali could only twist and turn upon the bed, back arching, softly crying out as she was trapped under Shepard's devotion. The human kissed and suckled at her breasts, licked at her belly, before finally positioning himself between her legs. That always set Tali off and she spent what seemed to feel like an hour moaning towards the ceiling as Shepard cradled and loved her. The quarian gasped, her breath flying into the air. She undulated, jerked, and soared as her husband kissed her between her thighs. Her hands massaged his scalp. Her lungs trembled and burned. Her jaw locked shut. Breathing was difficult._

 _He had always been good at this, Tali remembered. He was always so patient… and so talented with his hands… and his mouth._

 _The bed soon shook as Tali's ecstasy reached a peak. She spread her arms wide seconds later, cold air now pouring atop her as she lay, spread-eagled, as everything seemed crystallized to her, that each perfect moment could be halted and inspected at her very whim. She felt content. Clear. Even her ailments seemed to have fled._

 _But she wanted more._

 _She had begun straddling her husband a few minutes later, desperately thrusting upon him as though her life depended on it. Her toes curled as she rode him and Tali eagerly grasped Shepard's jaw with tight fingers as her wet tongue clumsily slid over his face, making his chin slick. Tali managed another orgasm rather quickly and she was soon resorted to a trembling, drooling, quivering mass atop Shepard. Yet the human still had some surprises up his sleeve for the quarian, as he gently took a hold around Tali's back and gently laid her upon the bed so that he was now on top. When she was calm enough to finally proceed, he did so with a purposeful yet vigorous energy._

 _Tali was overwhelmed almost immediately. She felt so full—full of love, full of Shepard—that level-headed thinking was no longer possible. Words dissolved into babbling. Slow breaths escalated into hyperventilating. Calculation departed for instinct. Lust overrode common sense._

 _A mad minute, and Tali loved every single second of it._

 _Wrapping her legs and arms around Shepard as he thrusted, Tali goaded him on with high-pitched cries of her own. "Yes!" she tried to say, "Yes!" but she could only manage tender yips. Her nails clawed into the skin of Shepard's back, she hugged him with all four limbs with all her might, and as she felt Shepard give a potent and heavy throb inside her, she voicelessly screamed as she shared in his pleasure, her own body seizing in time to Shepard's._

 _Her climax was violent._

 _Tensing. Burning. Painful. Wonderful. Love._

 _Then all was quiet._

 _Tali could feel Shepard inside her and she knew that he had finished. Making cooing noises as he panted atop her, she rubbed at his back, smearing the sweat across his skin that had beaded there. Tali kissed her husband's cheek, tender and soft. Shepard then raised his own head, red-faced and exhausted, but grinning like a mad fool. Their lips met to say what their words could not._

 _Later that night, the two of them had still not gotten dressed for bed just yet. Shepard had resumed sitting on the edge of the bed, basking in the fire, while Tali lay on her stomach, feet kicked back in the air. Shepard turned slightly to look at his wife, to see that lovely face that was continuously locked away from, to soak in the curvature of her body, as her softly ridged spine trailed down along her back, her butt lightly extended into the air. Shepard stroked Tali's soft skin with the back of his hand, causing the quarian to give out a shiver—Tali bit her lip coyly as she did so._

" _You do appear to be doing better," Shepard whispered. "Am I imagining things?"_

" _No, no, you aren't," Tali reassured him as she stretched out her arms and yawned, cat-like. "I feel… I feel better than ever. I could almost just walk right out into the air of Rannoch and breathe in my homeworld."_

" _In your current state? Not likely," Shepard chuckled as he gently cupped Tali's face, studying her features. "But I'm glad you're so confident."_

 _Tali stared right back at Shepard, her smile never wavering. "I like it when you look at me like that," she said._

" _Why is that?"_

" _I just feel the safest whenever you do. Like nothing in the galaxy can possibly hurt me."_

 _A dry moroseness briefly flashed over Shepard's face. Fighting not to let his misgivings show, he took a second to look away before reconnecting the stare. "I sincerely hope that's true, Tali."_

" _It is true," the quarian poked Shepard's leg. "Would I lie about something like that?"_

" _Probably not," Shepard agreed with a muted bob of his head. "Still… we've been so lucky."_

" _Lucky? Lucky how?"_

" _That you managed to beat your disease into remission. We caught a break here, Tali. We just need to be more careful in the future, in case this comes back."_

 _Tali rolled her eyes playfully as she lightly brushed her fingers against Shepard's bare hip. "The doctors don't give that much of a chance, John."_

" _They know better than either of us. They're doctors, and even they don't know how this cropped up."_

" _Who cares where this came from? It was a one-off. It's done."_

" _I care," Shepard sighed. "Someone has to. Why is it that you don't care?"_

" _You really want to know why? I don't care because I know that I'm not going anywhere," Tali fiercely declared as she pushed off the bed with her arms, now creeping forward on her knees until she swung her legs off the bed so that she could sit next to Shepard. "Not now. Not anytime soon. I won't be leaving you or Roahn."_

" _Tali…" Shepard tried to say, but was interrupted by the light caress of fingers upon his lips, followed by a soft kiss as Tali began to ply his face with her affection. Her body brushed up against his, her breasts tantalizingly close, and Shepard found himself stirring in desire, to helplessly drown in his own yearning._

" _I'm not leaving you," Tali whispered again as she pushed Shepard back down, climbing on top of him once more._

* * *

 _Omega_

Aria T'Loak stumbled into her quarters, head buzzing from drink, ears ringing from being at such a close proximity to music pumping from oversized loudspeakers. Even at such a distance from Afterlife, the thumping of bass hits bled through the walls like an ever-present heartbeat. It warped the asari's mind, but the constant thrumming had been something that she had gotten used to after a few centuries of languishing on this station. In fact, she found a small degree of comfort from the noise.

The asari sighed and rubbed at the back of her neck as she wandered about her domain, the lights still dim. She unsnapped the clasp of her suit near her neck, savoring the sensation of being able to breathe a little better now that her throat was somewhat less restricted. She liked having this synthetic leather outfit on, no doubt, but she did not savor the fact that it was somewhat tight in a few places. Moments that she could relax like this were most gratifying.

Allowing the quiet to wash over her for a bit, Aria finally appraised the state of her room, finding to her surprise that she was the only one here. That was unexpected.

Aria checked her chronometer in irritation. Emma was late. That little minx was supposed to have been in this room already, waiting for her. Aria was not a patient woman—she certainly did not like to have to wait on people. Today had been a rather lively day and Aria had been looking forward to unwinding with Emma for a few hours of torrid sex before she would rise for the next business affair the following morning. Wasting precious time like this was… troubling.

The door opening behind Aria gave rise to a burst of relief followed by a smoldering irritation.

"What _kept_ you so long-?" Aria began to say as she turned around.

Her next words died in her mouth.

"I didn't know that I was expected," the Legionnaire murmured in amusement, his bulky frame barely edging through the doorway as the cyborg proceeded to straighten up to his full height, easily standing a few feet above the top of Aria's head. The lowered light from the lamps sluiced around the enormous figure's form, outlining his massive frame by throwing the rest of him in shadow.

Aria took a step back, her hands instinctively clenching as purple streams of energy began to crackle from her closed fists. "Who the fuck are you?"

All eight of the Legionnaire's oculi seemed to narrow as his dual-toned breathing hissed over the bass thumping from the club down below. Narrow shafts of light shifted across the hardened transparisteel faceplate that muted the hint of bloody flesh just beyond. "The local auditor," he drawled.

"Hilarious," Aria spat back tonelessly as she raised a fist, about to strike a full-fledged biotic blast in the Legionnaire's direction. "You've couldn't possibly have picked a worse spot to wander."

"On the contrary, I'm right where I want to be."

The asari shook her head, but she still held off from attacking. "For an assassin, you're remarkably dense."

The cyborg rumbled in laughter, metal plates clanking with each shudder. "Whoever said anything about me wanting to kill you? All I'm after are some questions."

"You expect me to believe that, bitch?"

"I'm unarmed, see for yourself," the Legionnaire spread his hands wide, each inflection of every word perfectly even, allowing Aria to get a good glimpse that no weapon was holstered or slotted anywhere upon him. "But even so, attacking me might prove to be a bit of a challenge."

Aria would have liked nothing more than to prove the Legionnaire dead wrong, but there was the current circumstance to consider. The Legionnaire was way too calm for his own good, and even unarmed, he was still a big bastard. Tackling him in open combat was not going to be a cakewalk, but then again, Aria soured at the prospect of this fool getting the drop on her so easily. This little ambush would not be good for her reputation if word of it got out.

Her options limited, Aria chose to forego violence for the time being. She dropped her arms but an occasional flash of a biotic wisp still escaped her fingertips as they hung at her sides.

"Speak, then get the fuck out," Aria snapped.

A vague hint of a growl escaped the Legionnaire's vocabulator as the cyborg took up a neutral posture of rigidity. "You spoke with Commander Shepard recently, did you not?"

Aria was nearly thrown by where this line of questioning had already turned to, but the asari had spent centuries honing her ability to mask her surprise. Her breathing did not as much as rise, nor did a stray muscle twitch out of alignment. Still, she did not like being in the dark for very long.

"That's rich," Aria snorted instead. "The galaxy's most morally superior golden boy setting foot on Omega? How did you ever come to _that_ conclusion?"

"A squad of associates was sent to Omega recently. They reported that a ship registered in Shepard's name put into port here." The Legionnaire spoke as casually as one would discuss the weather. "As it stands, they have failed to report in for the better part of a couple days."

Aria feigned ignorance. "My sympathies, but I can't help what happens on Omega. People disappear here all the time."

"A little convenient that you are unaware of such events occurring under your own roof, Aria."

"Are you insinuating something?" Aria sneered contemptuously.

"Merely stating a fact," the Legionnaire hissed in kind.

Aria continued to frown before waving a hand dismissively, as if she could somehow will the Legionnaire from existence. Better to answer his questions and be done with this matter as quickly as possible. "What sort of squad are we talking about, here?"

If the Legionnaire suspected foul play or was getting more and more aggravated, there was nothing in his posture that could be deciphered to such an extent. "The kind that you would naturally take an interest in, considering your history with organizations like mine."

"Ah, the paramilitary kind," Aria pretended to recall as she snapped her fingers. "So, what outfit do you belong to? Blue Suns? Eclipse?"

"Chimera," the Legionnaire gave a singular, curt nod before proceeding back into his line of questioning. "The squad leader reported the presence of Shepard's ship but, admittedly he never made visual contact of the man himself. Shepard's ship evidentially no longer appears to be here and neither does the squad that reported it being here in the first place. If you don't know, then perhaps it's best that I check your records, make sure that it didn't _slip_ your mind."

"You're going to fucking stay right where you are and not take another step closer," Aria warned as she abruptly levelled an unflinching finger. "You do _not_ get to barge into my home and tell me what to do."

"The alternative is very simple," the Legionnaire said. "You have not been able to provide me with answers that I might deem suitable. Only when that happens will I depart."

The asari's hysterical laugh nearly rose to a shriek. "I… provide _you?_ " she repeated for emphasis. "You don't get it, asshole. There is only one person on this station that gets to order people around, and that person… is _me_. Omega… is all mine! _Mine!_ Not yours, not Chimera's… or Cerberus'… or anyone else's to command! I don't have to entertain a solitary second of your existence, for that is how little you are to me. I don't give a shit what you want or why you're here, but if you think that you're going to come up here and break Omega's only rule, then you are seriously fucked in the head."

As Aria was ranting, she failed to notice that two fingers of the Legionnaire's right hand gave a tiny flick, causing a light source to flash on behind the asari as she continued to espouse her nonsense to the cyborg. The Legionnaire kept on looking at Aria as she screamed at him, but all his attention was firmly fixated upon the array of security footage that had just beamed up at Aria's back.

Aria, however, was too engrossed in chewing the Legionnaire out to notice.

"…if you want me to indulge you, I can give you the minimum amount even though it's more than you and your masters deserve. _No_ , I have not seen Shepard. _No_ , I have no idea where your men are. _No_ , I will not help you find them. _Yes_ , you may go fuck yourself—,"

One by one a new screen of security footage booted up behind the asari, each one hovering in midair directly across from the last. The cluster of screens fanned out and began to wrap around the room in a perimeter, creating a vibrant barrier of light as more and more intriguing scenes began to play out around both Aria and the Legionnaire. Aria noticed this too late and, as a result, began to finally falter when she realized what the security screens were showing.

Recordings ripped straight from Afterlife's databanks. Each screen portrayed a different angle of a few key scenes, but all seemed to taunt Aria with damnation for her misplaced audacity.

A few of the hovering displays portrayed similar scenes all grouped together: Shepard confronting Aria upon her luxurious couch, Shepard engaging in willing dialogue with the pirate queen, Aria's mercenaries torturing the Chimera troopers mercilessly, Aria and Shepard _watching_ the torture.

In seconds, Aria's hypocrisy surrounded her, leaving her trapped.

 _He's hacked Omega's security_ , Aria realized, finally feeling a twinge of fear, wondering how her opponent had managed to outsmart her. _What is this thing?_

The Legionnaire stayed quiet at first, soaking up the queen of Omega's stunned silence. The circle of recordings continued to flash on by, soundless, but roaring the truth in a vacuum. Aria turned on the spot, trying to fumble for a way to get out of being caught in her own web of lies, but no matter how hard she tried, she kept drawing a blank.

"How much weight does Omega's one rule carry now?" the Legionnaire finally whispered, smugness tainting his words with the intent to provoke the asari.

Predictable to the last, Aria whirled to face the cyborg.

Aria's hands closed before abruptly snapping open, creating a wide disc that fluttered with unstable biotic energy, warping and crackling under its own weight, but the Legionnaire had begun moving before Aria had finished putting the barrier up. Before she had even moved to _attack_ , even.

The Legionnaire drew his arm back, and from his wrist a blade made out of anodized nano-particles slid into view, its edges humming with a fiery orange light and humming to a high frequency. Wasting no time, the Legionnaire thrust the blade forth with all his might, the blow seemingly slicing through time and space itself. The tip of the sword impacted upon Aria's not fully formed biotic shield and shattered it instantly as the force of the blow pushed it through—electricity spat from the shield's disintegration and Aria flinched away.

With a wet _thunk_ , Aria gave a solitary flinch and the sword finished its trajectory.

Time stood still for a deadly moment.

Aria remained frozen until a helpless cough gurgled from her throat. Hot, wet liquid ran up from her esophagus and beaded upon her lips before she splattered it all over her chin with another wracking wheeze. Trembling, her fingertips raised up and came away slick with blood.

The pirate queen finally looked down and saw where the Legionnaire's sword had lodged in her gut. Fire erupted from both her front and back. Aria then realized that she had been run through. She could not feel her legs anymore. Her vision grayed.

Then she realized how serious things were. Her stomach had been punctured. Her spinal column had been severed.

Without warning, the Legionnaire suddenly wrenched his arm back, pulling the sword from Aria's body. The asari found it interesting that the blade hurt going out even more than it did going in, but she only had a second to comprehend the blistering pain before shock took hold and her deadweight legs could no longer support her body. She fell heavily to the floor, a pool of blood slowly spreading out from the wound. Her hands gingerly groped for the area on her stomach where the blade had pierced her, uselessly trying to hold herself together. Blood bubbled on Aria's lips. The asari's life gushed between her fingers in limp throbs. The pain was already fading away.

Above her, the Legionnaire stood impassively, as the nano-blade retracted back into the polished chassis.

"You might have guessed that I didn't need you at all," the Legionnaire taunted as he leaned over slightly, enjoying the sight of the asari bleed out before his eyes. "If you had only cooperated from the start, I would not feel that I had to do this. But… you wasted my time, and I'm not so forgiving about that. You were only another obstacle to me."

Aria did not have the strength to muster a reply as her gasps began to slow, something the Legionnaire took a sick sort of pleasure in.

"No more biting quips from you ever again. Truth be told, Aria, you've remained a pain to the civilized galaxy for far too long. Omega's pride in being a haven for lawlessness been a constant source of embarrassment, but no longer. Cerberus took the wrong approach with handling this place—many times they could have killed you yet they always let you live. Vanity on their part; you ended up evicting them upon your triumphant return. What were they trying to avoid by killing you? Chaos? An attempt to limit any collateral damage? It does not matter anymore. The Alliance has no need for this place, and without you, well… the ensuing power vacuum is going to ensure that many unsavory individuals will tear themselves apart in your absence. Does that sound right?"

The asari groaned, spitting up a thick globule of blood-tinged mucus as she ground her teeth in agony.

"Yes," the Legionnaire hissed. "With you gone, Omega will destroy itself from within in a matter of days. There will be a bevy of hopefuls attempting to claim the mantle of ruler, but their attempts to wrest control will only be through violence. Gang warfare will rip through the streets. Thousands will die. Your own band will scatter, headless, and Omega will soon perish, destroyed from within. Operations in the sector will be crippled and order will eventually be restored to this little corner of the galaxy. You will perish knowing that you will have paved the way for both the Alliance and Chimera to flourish from your ashes. But you will not be remembered for long. No one will dedicate a thing to you. You will die without a legacy, with no cenotaph to mark your grave. An unceremonious end, for a queen."

The door to the apartment suddenly opened and the Legionnaire whipped his head around instantaneously, machine-like, his lightning-quick hands groping for a hidden latch upon his thigh.

"I'm sorry, babe," a young human woman in a tight-fitting dress skirted through the doorway, looking at her omni-tool, distracted. "I was all caught up on-,"

Eventually the human gained some of her wits back in time to spot the gargantuan metal cyborg standing over her lover, who was slowly dying while coated in her own blood. The girl's red lips swelled as she realized the danger she was in and she started to slowly breathe in and out, two seconds away from losing it completely.

"Hel—," the girl tried to scream.

The Legionnaire beat her to the punch, as he suddenly raised his arm, a pistol clenched tightly in a fist, withdrawn from a hidden holster. The gun exploded once, in time to the beat of the pounding music, and a flare furiously brightened up the dim room in an instant. The light caught the very first instant of the girl's head coming apart, brains and chunks of skull parting away in an expanding mass, but darkness caught the rest and the lifeless body dropped to the floor, now cradled by the shadow.

 _Emma_ , Aria winced as what felt like ice began to infect her, spreading from the stab wound at a glacial pace.

Smoke curled from the end of the pistol as the Legionnaire still held his arm ramrod straight, as if the freshly decapitated body of the human woman would miraculously get up anytime soon. Not a gear whirred until the Legionnaire waited the maximum amount of time until he was certain that wielding a weapon was no longer necessary.

The cyborg flicked his wrist, spinning the pistol several times upon his finger before he quickly slotted it into a holster at his side. The Legionnaire hated that little tic—he was not in control of that particular body function. The techs in Chimera specifically programmed him to showcase a little flair now and then. The Legionnaire felt the entire action was juvenile and useless, but the wires embedded in his brain were hijacking all his actions. He had no recourse other than to endure this foolish game.

Before the Legionnaire finally departed, he beheld the fallen Aria one final time, unsympathetic to her plight. The pool of blood surrounding the asari had spread to the Legionnaire's feet, staining his soles as Aria's pulse grew feather-faint.

"' _Thus always to tyrants,_ '" came the rasping taunt. "The only epitaph you've ever deserved."

A harsh squeal of wet heels on floor and the cyborg finally stomped away, leaving red blotches behind him in his wake. As she lay on the floor, cold took Aria as the beat of the music faded and the silence proceeded to overwhelm her.

The pirate queen of Omega would die alone.

* * *

 **A/N: A dab of angst, a little smut, and a touch of violence. You guys got a bit of everything in this chapter.**

 **I'd definitely love to hear your thoughts of the chapter - I do try my best to respond to each and every review, so don't be shy!**

 **Playlist:**

 **Shepard Highlight Reel (Source Music): "Monza 1976" by Hans Zimmer, Lorne Balfe, Mel Wesson, and Martin Tillman from the film _Rush (The Complete Score Album)_**

 **Pillow Talk: "Glück" by Hans Zimmer and Bryce Jacobs from the film _Rush_**

 **Long Live the Queen: "Ground Zeroes" by Ludvig Forssell from the video game _Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes_**


	14. Chapter 14: A Paternal Derelection

" _You remember Anthony Simmons, Mr. Koenig? Known as 'Tony' to his friends. VP of Operations at Chimera for three years. Before that, he was a general parts manager at Nissan-Honda for seven years… and worked at BluLight prior to that."  
_ Sen. Edelman – Israel

" _Now we're slinging Tony's name through the mud too?"_  
Erich Koenig, CEO – Chimera

" _As far as we're concerned, Mr. Simmons has already doused himself with enough mud that we could not possibly sully his name further. No, his tenure at Chimera was lively enough that we would be hard-pressed to tarnish his reputation, even in such a forum like this. Just to provide some context to this committee, Mr. Simmons had a reputation for spending lavish amounts of money, using Chimera funds, on personal items not related to his work for Chimera. Designer suits, sojourns to strip clubs, using company transport for personal vacations—this is only scratching the surface. Communications between several execs show that not only was the board knowledgeable about this sort of behavior, it was encouraged."  
_ Sen. Edelman – Israel

" _Senator, I'm not going to beat around the bush here. Tony's spending habits were known by everyone at the top level, but this was all a mistake on Tony's part. You see, he kept frequently mixing up his personal account with the company account. He paid Chimera back when this mistake was brought to light, every single credit spent."  
_ Erich Koenig, CEO – Chimera

" _And so you never thought to have a serious discussion with Mr. Simmons after the fifth time he 'mixed up' his personal account for yet another frivolous spending adventure?"  
_ Sen. Edelman – Israel

" _Tony is a good man. We didn't want to lose an experienced man like him."_  
Erich Koenig, CEO – Chimera

" _We are talking about the same man who spent three million credits of company funds to add a genetically modified cheetah to grace his house?"  
_ Sen. Edelman – Israel

* * *

 _Tuchanka Orbit_

If there could have been one word to perfectly describe Tuchanka, it would be _desolate_.

A far cry from the humid and temperate climate zones of the asari homeworld, Roahn reckoned. The patchy clouds in Tuchanka's atmosphere were light and wispy, easily dissolved by the rays of the nearby sun. The UV radiation baked the planet's crust, causing it to crumble under a swath of heat. Any dribble of moisture could not exist on the surface for more than a minute, as the temperature anywhere on Tuchanka would fry it right up. A harsh, uninviting world. Only those fit to survive the trials and tribulations present on the surface and beneath it would stand a chance at conquering the planet.

There was quite the contrast between Thessia and Tuchanka in just about all aspects, visually and socially. While Thessia had been a lush world, filled to the brim with fertile jungles and expansive oceans, Tuchanka was a dust bowl, the reddish-brown color of dirt. Seas and forests were nonexistent upon the planet's surface. There were no stretches of green or plains of blue to break up the monotony of the jagged, vicious landscape. It was just one continuous desert, craggy and dotted with mountains and canyons.

It was a fitting home for a race as hardy as the krogan.

Despite its appearance, Tuchanka had not been a desolate world since the dawn of time. Many centuries ago, Tuchanka _had_ been able to support thick tangles of forests and shallow silty oceans, but those land features had vanished a long time ago. Had history played out differently, Tuchanka would still be a world teeming with life, humid and ripe for harvesting, but the krogan's insatiable lust for war had only spelled disaster by upending their homeworld in disastrous fashion. War defined the krogan race and dominated their lives. Clans split the planet as despots continuously battled for new slivers of land to control, never completely satisfied with the amount of land under their control. Enough was never really _enough_ for the krogan. These clans were always inventing new ways to kill, to dominate, to further bring Tuchanka under the control of one body.

An ambitious goal. A fruitless goal.

If left to their own devices, the disparate clans would merely have fought each other to a relative standstill, but the inventiveness of progress merely proved to exacerbate the issue at hand. Everything was changed when the atom bomb was created on Tuchanka. The contest that was war had been forever and irreparably altered by this one discovery. When the krogan discovered the destruction that nuclear weapons could bring, they were transfixed instead of humbled. They were short-sighted to the long-term problem that these bombs could bring; the krogan only saw them as tools of total annihilation—a means to bring their enemies to their knees in one fell swoop! Unlike the humans, who had initially balked upon creating their own analogue for these weapons, the krogan seized their chance almost immediately. Unlike every other race who held back in senselessly displaying the power of splitting the atom, the krogan had never even given a single thought to what would happen if they had decided to push that fateful button.

They summarily paid the price in just as rapid of a fashion.

The nuclear blasts proved too great for Tuchanka to handle. Firestorms and freak winters decimated all plant life. Cities were doused in radioactivity, rendering them unlivable. Craters upended towns, blowing them to smithereens. Ash choked and killed the livestock. The seas either dried up to become salt flats or were poisoned so greatly that they became alkaline in nature. The krogan, now without a viable homeworld to sustain them, scattered around the galaxy as Tuchanka died, finding themselves lost as the universe swallowed them up, as befitting its cruel nature.

For a while, scant few krogan continued to occupy Tuchanka while every else became outcasts. But as the radiation dissipated and after a few fresh water wells had been drilled, Tuchanka was soon able to support the bare minimum for life once more. The krogan returned, still carrying the same animosity to those not within their own clan, but also continuing to entertain the idea that one banner would soon fly over the world, for better or for worse.

However, in recent years, Tuchanka was going through a new renaissance of its own. In a few sparse locations, plant life was revealed to be returning, and more underground springs of fresh water were being found and welled. Under the guidance of clan Urdnot, Tuchanka's reigning faction, the krogan were beginning to make headway towards reconstructing several of their cities and building up their population numbers. Ironically, the krogan had managed to come out from the Reaper invasion in a better position than they had been previously. Clan Urdnot's more moderate nature was definitely helping in that regard as the clan leader prized cementing the krogan as an economic power above petty squabbles with rival clans. Both he and his mate had brought upon an idealistic revolution within the krogan, which was summarily translating into a promising recovery period for the species.

At the very least, the newfound attention the krogan were receiving from the galactic community was definitely rendering out to have some immediate visible impacts, such as the queue of Alliance warships congregating above one area of the planet proved. Fifteen gargantuan destroyers, their engines running cold, each a kilometer in length, hovered above Tuchanka, the lights from each individual deck glowing like stars.

Shepard, looking through the main deck, spotted the cluster almost immediately as his craft started to take a nosedive into the stratosphere.

"They've certainly got the consideration of the galaxy now," Shepard noted in awe before the ships melted away once the shuttle speared into the top anvil of a cumulonimbus cloud, leaving a swirl of vortices behind in its wake. "There any reason why the Alliance is staking out Tuchanka right now?"

"That's right, I keep forgetting that you've been out of the loop for a bit," a voice from behind Shepard muttered and he turned around to find Garrus standing over his chair, also staring at where the Alliance group had been through the flight deck. "The Alliance negotiated a good-faith deal with the krogan a while back. They've got a five-year agreement in which they lend the krogan aid for their construction projects, provide military support, and organize food shelters. In return, the krogan promise future provisional support once they get their own government up and running. I think the Alliance is treating their involvement as an investment of sorts, hoping that it will pay off in the long term."

Shepard blew air out of his mouth, impressed. The krogan had definitely been one of the more downtrodden races in the galaxy for their perceived brutish notions. At the very least, he had been proved that they had the capacity for deliberate consideration thanks to all of the experience he had working with them in the past. This would definitely help give them the recognition they needed if they were to become a serious galactic power. Good on the Alliance for taking a leap of faith.

"Well, at the rate things were going when I last saw the place, I'll bet the Alliance will see a definite return on their investment."

"Here's hoping."

By the time the ship had landed in the main district near what constituted as the capitol city, a crowd had already began to form near the landing pad. Unsurprising, given that Shepard had relayed his intent to visit ahead of time, but even he was surprised at the jubilation just waiting beyond the docking ramp. Wrex certainly did not spare any expense, nor waste any time.

As they lined up to exit, Shepard did notice that Roahn was making an effort to stay at a good length away from him. She was not fleeing his presence outright, but she had adopted a weary sort of outlook towards him ever since she had gotten it in her head that coming clean during his deposition could have potentially saved the both of them anguish and heartbreak in the future. Shepard felt for the girl—he really did. But there was no way that he could think of that would be able to dissuade Roahn from what she was considering—he just did not have that power. Roahn was just scared, is all, and the fact that she had held up this long was a testament to her strength. Hell, Shepard was proud of his daughter for making it this far and holding her own… but he could not say that to her out loud because he knew he could not make it seem sincere to her. Children at her age had an uncanny ability to sniff out bullshit.

Right out of the gate, Shepard spotted two familiar faces as the ramp finally lowered. The first was a female named Urdnot Bakara, mate to the chief of clan Urdnot. Bakara was a shaman and had been instrumental years ago in helping to eradicate the salarian-inflicted genophage using her modified tissue to generate a cure. Bakara wore an elaborate blue and gold robe and headpiece combination encrusted with a variety of symbols that managed to cover her entire body, sans her reptilian eyes and nostrils. Bakara was a pragmatic sort, one who prized intellect over brute strength. Like all krogan, she had a deep voice and was blunt to a fault, but spoke very pointedly and had a better moral compass than most people that Shepard had met.

Her mate, standing right beside her, was a little more animated than she was.

Urdnot Wrex roared a laugh as soon as he saw Shepard descend the ramp, his gargantuan mouth open wide as he spread his arms out as far as they could go, as if he were hailing welcome heroes straight from a field of victory. Wrex was decked out in a set of blisteringly red armor, polished to a high sheen, the scars upon it cleaned so that they were displayed prominently as badges of honor. The krogan raced to meet Shepard as the human set foot down upon Tuchanka, grasping Shepard's shoulders in a firm embrace, but about as delicately as a krogan could manage. Still, Shepard was shook around a bit from Wrex's exuberance.

" _Shepard!"_ Wrex bellowed in delight.

" _Wrex!"_ Shepard similarly grunted, trying to mask a grimace as Wrex bent his spine out of proportion from his jostling.

The krogan ceased in his reveling just enough for Shepard to catch his breath back. Wrex was still grinning like a lunatic, though.

"Almost didn't believe it when you mentioned that you were going to swing on by," Wrex said through a toothy grin before he gave the human a once-over, noting the human's beard and gray hair. "Damn, you look just as old as I am."

"I've been hearing that a lot, you senile bastard," Shepard resisted rolling his eyes, yet no malice laced within his words at all.

Wrex heartily laughed. " _Senile?_ You shit! I've got at least 400 years left in me!"

"The scars are not as prominent on _my_ face, though."

The red-eyed krogan gave Shepard a sour look before it rapidly dissolved into a genial expression. Wrex's most prominent markings were a series of four deep lines that ran down from the crest of bone atop his head, down his face to cross his right nostril, trailing off all the way down his neck—the result of an errant strike from a varren that had ventured too close for comfort on a far-away dustball a long while ago.

"Point taken," the krogan maintained. Wrex had always been proud of his scars, though. He was fond of the effect that they had with intimidating other people unused to dealing with him.

Wrex would jokingly maintain in the years after the war that Shepard had been a "bad influence" on him as a way to deflect any criticisms from the direction that he was pulling krogan society in. Wrex was one of the few krogan who had maintained a careful eye towards the future instead of fully miring himself in the blood and gore of his enemies, a trait that most krogan would have been happy to continue following. As the leader of Clan Urdnot, Wrex had ruled over his people with an iron grip but with a sober calculation. Reason and logic was not a common combination that fully gelled within most krogan, but somehow, it had been instilled in Wrex. Despite his natural affinity for seeking out a good fight, Wrex had always been more focused on rebuilding krogan society instead of continually glorifying violence. Bakara, his mate, shared in that sentiment, which had spearheaded the period of rejuvenation the krogan were currently undergoing.

Despite Wrex's fearsome appearance, Shepard had found the krogan to have a rather keen intelligence. Wrex never minced words and had a tendency to speak his mind all the time. Conversely, it was hard to make Wrex furious beyond belief as the krogan maintained a rather even temper for the most part, but considering his brutish presence, pissing off Wrex would be suicide for anyone foolish enough to attempt such a thing.

The krogan then turned to spot the people following Shepard behind the ramp. Wrex could barely stop grinning once he spied Garrus and Liara standing just a few paces away, clearly energetic at the sight of his friends.

"My favorite turian and asari!" Wrex said in his booming voice as he grasped Garrus' and Liara's arms in turn, a brotherly gesture.

"Good to see you, you big lug," Garrus smirked. "You certainly haven't changed one bit."

"Heh, well, I see you haven't added any more scars to your collection. I suppose that I'll be having the better array until I die." Wrex then turned to the side to face the asari. "How are you doing, Liara?"

Liara appraised the krogan warmly while Garrus ruefully shook his head behind her. "I'm doing quite well, Wrex. It's good to see that you've been keeping busy here. The place looks better than I remember."

Such an observation was not an example of idle talk. Tuchanka had been a planet of disrepair for everyone here who was not a krogan. It was not an uncommon sight to venture into a bombed-out neighborhood or to come across a highway overpass that had collapsed from intense krogan-caused earthquakes. At least here, all signs of debris had been cleared away, giving the boulevards back their original widths. A thick layer of dust still caked over every surface, but that was par for the course for a regular Tuchanka day.

"You think we've just been sitting on our asses all these years?" Wrex smirked as he mockingly reared back. " _Someone's_ got to keep up appearances over here. But it seems that you all have found ways of attending to your boredom… or have I been missing something? Is Shepard getting the gang back together again? Couldn't resist signing up for another suicide mission, is that it?"

Liara and Garrus shared a look. "It's… something we can explain later," Liara said. "Shepard thought we'd visit for another reason entirely."

"Bored out of your minds so much that you decided to join back up with him once more?"

"Well, that's one reason why _I'm_ here," Garrus said proudly as he mockingly polished off a section of his chest with his knuckles. "I also had this interest in seeing just how fat you had gotten while acting as a king."

"Keep up your yapping, Vakarian, and I'll knock your head off," Wrex grinned. "Better yet, I'll force you to compete with the hatchlings in a ryncol-swilling contest."

" _Ugh_. Please, no," Garrus grimaced, trying not to recall bad memories. One of the last couple of times that Garrus had been dragged along to Tuchanka on one of Shepard's adventures, he had been pressured by Wrex to take a shot of ryncol, a krogan liquor, as part of a dare. Being young and cocky, he had obliged to the request almost immediately only to spend the better part of an hour in a fetal position on the ground, curled up from nausea. Apparently, ryncol tasted like an oil field to any alien other than krogan. Wrex had later revealed to Garrus that he had only consumed the cocktail variant of ryncol—had the turian drunk pure ryncol, the acidity from the drink would have dissolved his stomach lining.

"I can tell that you're all keeping me in suspense," Wrex knocked his fists together as he appraised his three friends. "And I'm rather doubtful that you'd come all the way over here just to say hello. Tuchanka's home, but it's not exactly a prime vacation spot. So, what the hell would possibly bring all of you to—,"

From between Garrus and Liara, Wrex tilted his head as he spotted a diminutive figure timidly hiding behind the cluster of legs. Wrex gave a slow blink as Roahn finally edged out, the blue colors of her suit slightly muted by the dim lighting of the cavernous landing area. It clicked with the krogan almost immediately as to who this was and he dropped to a knee, bringing his head to Roahn's height, softening his expression so that the girl would not be frightened of him.

"Ah," was all Wrex said at first as Roahn gingerly edged her way forward. The girl was unsure of how she should be feeling right now. She had never seen a krogan in person before and although her instincts were screaming at her right now to run away, she held her ground. This was _Wrex_ , the famed krogan leader and a close friend of her father's. What did she have to be afraid about?

"H-Hi," Roahn squeaked out as she raised a hand, already cursing herself for being so tongue-tied. Why was it that every time she met a new legend she always made a fool out of herself?

Wrex did not seem to notice the girl's embarrassment and instead held out a large hand reminiscent of a paw. The appendage was more than three times the size of Roahn's own hand and coated in the shining red armor of the krogan warlord, but Roahn eventually placed her hand quite easily into Wrex's palm. The krogan delicately closed his fingers, never taking his eyes off of Roahn.

"I watched your mother grow up," the krogan spoke to Roahn, tenderness now overtaking his words. Shepard, who was standing by, froze up at hearing Wrex speak so softly and intimately. "She was unique. She was one of the very few who never treated me as a simple brute. I adored her like she was my own daughter." Wrex took a gentle pause. "I have a feeling that I'll love you the same way."

For Roahn, it felt like something had switched on within her that had never been thrown before. A key moment that she had been yearning for it to pass for so long, now upon her. Her eyes watered and the edges of her vision blurred.

No one but her caught the very simple gesture it had taken to activate this change in the girl.

A piece of her soul had been missing for the last two years. A type of pain that had wrenched her terribly far more than enduring the death of her mother. It was this absence that had wrangled her so awfully, that had made her feel like her gut was twisting itself into knots. And only now did that pain start to lessen, now alleviating itself. A part of her was allowed to relax.

Knees trembling, Roahn jumped forward and instinctively hugged the krogan around the neck, even though her arms did not even wrap halfway around the dry skin of his throat. Wrex chuckled affectionately and patted Roahn's back, almost making her stagger in place but she managed to hold on. The krogan then ducked his shoulder slightly, and with a little push of his arm, managed to surprise Roahn into sitting upon the wide shoulder plate. A tiny squeal escaped Roahn's lips as Wrex then stood back up to his full height, with her perched upon his shoulder. She towered several feet above everyone else and her legs dangled in midair.

" _Wow_ ," was all she could say in such a mad moment.

As she continued to balance herself upon Wrex's shoulder, Roahn managed, for a few important seconds, to nab her father's eye and connect their magnetic gazes together. Roahn, remaining silent, tried to sum up all of her fears and hopes into whatever scraps of light could pierce through her visor and slam straight into Shepard's own eyes, to bash him over the head with her unsaid plea. To make him understand what it was that she was missing within herself.

Blankness only clouded her father's features. Roahn had to turn away in disgust.

Everyone else was forgotten as Wrex now spent every iota of his attention to dote upon Roahn, whom he bounced with every step he took. "I must _show_ you what your parents made possible!" the krogan beamed as he stared up at the quarian girl. "Do you even know what we've been able to achieve after all this time?"

Roahn truthfully had no idea and she shook her head as such.

"My girl," Wrex rumbled in anticipation, "you're about to get a better education in an hour than any of those stuffy quarian academies could ever teach you in a year! Come!"

Somehow, Roahn was a little apprehensive at the fact that Wrex could possibly stuff an entire term's worth of material into such a short period of time, or that she had any choice in following him because she was still nestled upon his shoulder, but she found that she really did not care. Suddenly and unexpectedly laughing as Wrex broke into a playful gait, the two of them raced through the dusty hallway as they approached the clan hall just past the next section.

Shepard had no qualms about Wrex temporarily looking after Roahn as he watched them depart. After all, who else could protect the girl better in this galaxy, other than her own father? Now finding themselves forgotten, though, Shepard decided that it was better that he follow the two to wherever it was they had taken off.

As Shepard proceeded on his way, with Garrus and Liara in tow, he had to stop for a second as he was nearly barreled over by what appeared to be oversized pill bugs rampaging their way through the large corridors, bumping into everything and not really caring at whom they were charging at. It took a little while for Shepard to realize that he was in the presence of krogan children once he managed a closer look. They were not all that cute—they had stubby legs, tan colored skin, and at this age, the bone plating upon their back looked like uneven rock as it had not been smoothened with time.

Bakara, watching Shepard have to jump in all directions to prevent himself from being run over, laughed. "You'll want to watch your step around here, commander," she said, unintentionally using Shepard's rank to identify him. "The hatchlings are restless and they don't run out of energy easily. We may be able to take the knocks when they run into us, but soft aliens like you might receive some broken bones if you don't keep yourself alert."

"Thanks for the warning," Shepard panted as he clumsily hopped around on one foot. "I take it that breeding's been going well for you guys?"

Bakara shrugged. "We're not back to our normal clutch sizes just yet, but 250 eggs per season is nothing to gripe about."

Shepard gaped for a second, certain that he had misheard the shaman. "I'm… sorry? You said _250?_ "

"We used to get up to a thousand before the genophage was put into effect," Bakara said mildly, not at all affected by Shepard's dumbfounded reaction. "You could say that we're taking things slow around here."

Behind Shepard, Garrus similarly wilted. "Now I know why people back then were so concerned about the krogan population spiraling out of control," he whispered to Liara, who shushed him.

"Myself, I'm just going easy for now," Bakara said as she rotated in place. "I _had_ lined up the fifteen kids from my clutch to greet you, as Wrex wanted to show them off, but they all seem to have wandered off by now. Typical. They never settle in one place for very long. They'll be back when the scoutmaster brings in the next kill from the field, though. They do manage to still themselves when you ply them with food."

" _Fifteen?_ " Liara now interjected. "Now I'm understanding why Wrex had gotten so much better at his parental skills."

Shepard understood as well. Wrex had been a little rough around the edges, metaphorically and literally speaking, when he had met the krogan for the first time, but it seemed that Roahn's first meeting with Wrex had been starkly different from his own experience. The krogan had become affectionate with the girl as quickly as flipping on a light switch. It had taken a _lot_ more effort on Shepard's part to earn that kind of trust with Wrex, he recalled with some bemusement, reminded that he and Wrex had held each other at gunpoint for a few moments many years ago. A fragile relationship back then. An unbreakable bond now.

"Trust me, parenting came rather naturally for him," Bakara said matter-of-factly. "I hardly needed to goad him to make time for the little scamps. Like we promised, we named the first one Mordin. But that name is not all that uncommon on Tuchanka—a lot of females now have a tradition of naming one of their clutch Mordin."

Garrus gave a slight guffaw. "I wonder how that old salarian would have liked to have known just how highly held in regard he would be in krogan society."

That was something that Shepard was wondering as well. Mordin Solus had previously tinkered with the krogan genophage to bring its effectiveness back up after its degenerating properties had waned over the centuries. However, Mordin would summarily be responsible for creating the cure to the genophage years later with Bakara's tissue, having gone through a crisis of faith with his work, no longer certain that the krogan deserved to be punished for their sins anymore. Mordin was not all that sentimental to be concerned about leaving a legacy behind, but Shepard was certain that Mordin would have been amused at just how uplifted his reputation would be from his final sacrifice. In a sense, the krogan had ensured that the memory of Mordin would last for millennia.

Bakara's yellow eyes then bored straight into Shepard's head as she considered him thoughtfully. "We still haven't had a girl yet, but when I do, I know just the name to give her."

Shepard blinked. "What name do you have in mind?"

If Shepard could have seen beyond the veil shrouding Bakara's expression, he would have seen the wide grin grace the krogan's features.

"We'll tell you when the day comes."

* * *

A grand outdoor staircase ten meters wide paved the way downwards towards a deep canyon etched out of finely shaped rock, a gorge deliberately constructed brick by brick as a monument to the krogan people. A reclaimed ruin, once abandoned, was now the de facto base for the main Urdnot clan as well as the other clans underneath its protective wing. From where she was still perched upon Wrex's shoulder, Roahn had a clear view towards the market square on the lowest level where she could see a bevy of krogan mill about several meters below her.

The sky was the color of dead leaves, heavily draped by dust clouds in low orbit. Occasionally the clouds would break to give Roahn a glimpse of the sandy sky, but it was overcast more often than not today. An icon in the corner of her visor was calling her attention every few minutes or so—the level of particulates in the Tuchanka air was rapidly clogging up her air filters. She would need to clear it out next time she was on board a ship with a clean room, because at this rate, she would have an unworkable filter within a few days when it should have lasted her months.

Ornate pagodas speared the sky in deference to the crumbled remains of what had been a metal spire a few miles away. Rushing sand blown from storms had weathered the rock to be entirely smooth, ironing out the roughness that had been present when the original builders had laid the foundation. There was a distinct harshness to the architecture here, as if the designers had fabricated everything here with a survivor's mentality. Everything here was built to last, each standing structure was heavily supported with buttresses and extra thick columns. Any building that was in a deteriorated state was only that way due to what looked like outside impacts, not structural failure.

No doubt that the krogan were quite the hardy sort of people.

Below her, Wrex lifted an arm to indicate something to Roahn. He had been exuberantly showing her around the area, obviously thrilled at the chance to guide the daughter of perhaps his greatest friend around his home. The krogan probably thought that he was providing a worthy tribute of his services to Shepard by acting as a temporary guardian for the girl. Whatever the real case, Wrex's paternal instincts were out in full force today.

"A few kilometers that way," Wrex said, "is the Shroud. To the right is the Hollows, our most sacred meeting ground. Clan Urdnot pushed all this way from our usual nesting spot during the war and it seemed only appropriate that we make our new camp here, out of respect for the old ways."

"The Shroud," Roahn repeated. "That's where the genophage was first deployed and then cured, right?"

"Correct," the krogan rumbled thoughtfully. "Did you learn that by yourself?"

"No. Mom told me."

Wrex scratched at his chin. "Yes… your mother. Tali was one of the most brilliant people that I've met in my long, sorry life. I know what you're thinking: an old, decrepit krogan like me somehow being influenced by a young and peppy quarian? Shit, even the rest of the whelps here would scoff at such a thing, little bastards." Wrex then looked up as if he suddenly remembered the age of whom he was talking to. "Ah, sorry for the cursing. Get me going on the state of things around here and something's bound to slip out. I'm not perfect."

"I don't mind," Roahn honestly said as she kicked her legs a bit as they dangled.

"Neither did your mother. She was no prude, that was obvious. It looks like you've inherited her brains, though. But, it's interesting… when I look at you, I'm reminded of—,"

Roahn gave a withering sigh, interrupting the krogan. "I know, I know. Everyone says it. I remind you of her, right?"

Wrex gave a quick grumble before continuing. "Actually, I was going to say that you remind me more of your _father_."

That was not the answer that Roahn was expecting and she was thrown so hard that she nearly pitched right off of Wrex's shoulder. It was only through pure reflex that she managed to cling onto the armor pad supporting her as she performed a rapid double-take.

"Wait… _what?_ " she could only say.

The krogan amiably shrugged. "I would have thought it was obvious."

" _How?_ "

"Don't know," Wrex murmured. "It's… how you carry yourself. The two of you have a lot in common, actually. I've been around long enough to take one look and just _know_. The both of you have a lot of self-confidence and determination within you. You tend to have the same upright posture as your father, all tall and forward-thinking. It's an unconscious tic, that, when you're mimicking the little idiosyncrasies of your parents. Plus, you've got the same intense look in your eyes that he does. It's an uncanny resemblance."

"But you've only known me ten minutes!"

"I'm just _that_ good," Wrex rumbled, his laughter jostling the girl on his shoulder. "Nah, it merely comes with being a parent and having a lot of accrued experience. You'll understand it yourself when you get older. But take it from me, Roahn, you're probably the luckiest girl alive to have a father like Shepard."

As much as Roahn wanted to correct the krogan, she kept mum on the subject, relegating herself to being led towards the bottom of the valley with her still riding atop Wrex's shoulder. The sentiment from Wrex was not something that Roahn could honestly agree in and she was overtly wary about conforming to such a blanket statement when she possessed mixed feelings about the whole sorry thing.

How many times was she going to have to endure people telling her what a wonderful father Shepard was? Did they really know this man? Were they aware of what kind of a father he was?

A perfect father would not have kept his own child in the dark about his past for nine years.

A perfect father would not have had to resort to sullen silences to deal with his daughter.

A perfect father would go to great lengths to tell her just how much he truly cared about her.

Even though Shepard had professed to be trying so hard to amend his bad habits, Roahn could not truly shed her chilly instincts, nor forget many an empty moment when she had reached out for his support when she was younger only to grasp at bare air in return. Shepard had been a phantom for most of her life, even though his presence had been so near to her. It was like she had no effect on him. His newfound interest in her now seemed almost insincere, brought on from adversity rather than a spontaneous necessity.

If people knew just how close Shepard had come to _ruining_ her family, would they still hold him in the same light?

"Hmm," was the only utterance to come from her mouth lest Wrex would think that she had not been paying attention. Unbeknownst to her, the krogan detected the hidden animosity in her tone and did not press her on it, already focusing on new topics to peruse.

Shepard and the rest of the gang had taken a shorter path to the ground level, beating Wrex and Roahn there. Everyone was glancing in the direction near the western wall, where a pair of young krogan were squaring off within a raised and tiny circular arena, squinty-eyed and slowly stalking in side-stepping maneuvers.

Wrex slowed to a halt and lowered himself down so that Roahn could finally slide off his shoulder. "What are they doing?" she asked, referring to the krogan who were intensely appraising the other.

"They're just engaging in a little competition," Wrex said, clearly not at all alarmed by the inherent violence brewing between the two krogan males.

Roahn blinked as she stepped up beside her father, with Wrex taking her other side. "What are they competing for?"

"What every male on Tuchanka is after. Females."

"I… I don't… what?"

"All males who complete the Rite of Honor are deemed eligible for breeding with the females," Wrex explained to the girl. "In the old days, we used to keep our females as prizes of war, to be bartered or fought over. Now, with the genophage cured, the females have integrated their way into our clan, meaning that the males have to go through a new rite of courtship to win over a female. Most of the time, this just means that if two krogan are fighting over a female to breed, they will spar with one another. And…"

"To the victor go the spoils," Shepard muttered beside them.

"Not all the time," Wrex corrected. "The female can still deny the male if they remain unimpressed. But that only acts as more motivation for the winner to _earn_ her, so to speak."

Just then, one of the krogan in the circle let out a short bellow before rearing his head and ramming it down in a fierce headbutt. The resulting thwack created a miniature shockwave that sounded like a thunderclap, shaking Roahn's ribcage in one fierce jolt. Amazingly, the krogan on the receiving end of the blow staggered but did not drop to a knee. The attack had not even cut the alien's skin and no blood marred his face. Instead, the wounded krogan ground his teeth and lowered his stance, already preparing for the next move.

The two krogan then lightly bounced on the balls of their feet before embarking into a rapid charge. Their heels dug channels into the earth—two tons of raw muscle and power translated into an enormous amount of kinetic energy. The krogan collided once more, emitting another earsplitting _crack_. Their fists pummeled the other's face, causing hot blood to splash to the ground. But before either one of the krogan could reach up and claw the other's eyes out, they abruptly disengaged with a harsh bark, panting and weary as they formulated their next attack.

To Shepard, this sort of fighting was different than the krogan battle styles he had been exposed to before. The males here were not looking to kill or to maim, but to wear the other down through attrition and perseverance. The longer they lasted, the more respected they seemed to earn. A vast difference from the quick, dirty, and ultimately brutal method of attack that the krogan loved to employ during combat.

"I would have thought this fight would go by faster," Roahn said, a bit awed at the spectacle, also finding the circumstances to be out of her realm of expectations.

Next to her, Wrex chuckled. "That only happens near the end. A fight like this can last more than a day, if they so choose. It's actually a bit more meticulous than it seems. Each combatant is squaring up their opponent, probing and testing for weaknesses. They want to learn which moves fatigue them and where the cracks in their armor lie. It's a lengthy process and when both combatants have learned all about their opponent that they need to know, they will go at it like a varren to a pyjak nest." The krogan rubbed his hands together, almost salivating at the prospect of such a vibrant and ferocious battle. "The reason these mating fights are so slow is that each krogan knows what's at stake. They don't want to rush this moment if it finally means that they can pass on their genes to a future generation."

Still watching the krogan, Roahn was a bit nonplussed. "But wouldn't it be easier if the krogan chose each other based on how they felt for each other? Do they really have to do all this fighting?"

Again, Wrex laughed. "Ah, kid, fighting is something that all krogan inherently enjoy. Our _feelings_ aren't all that much use to females, and they know that better than we do. We're expected to act a certain way, and that's because our society is more conducive to such a method of thinking. Ask Bakara—even _she_ gives me shit on occasion whenever she does not believe that I'm acting like a prodigal krogan. Women. Sometimes, I believe that they hold more power over the men. Ask your father, he'll confirm it."

Roahn laughed. She knew just how strong-willed Tali had been when dealing with Shepard. If she had been right on a particular subject, she would press and press until her opponent would finally give. She had been remarkably resilient, right up until the end.

Everyone's interest in the fight seemed to be dwindling rapidly. In contrast, there was an even bigger crowd surrounding a much smaller and sunken pit over near where the exit ramp led to the main highway, which had been dug into the ground by a few meters. Krogan lined the rim of the pit, laughing, roaring, and jostling each other in a raucous manner. Money changed hands, bottles clinked to the ground, and venomous curses were exchanged. Roahn, her curiosity piqued once more began to check out what all the hubbub was about over there, but she caught a look from Liara, who was subtly shaking her head at her.

"You don't want to see what's over there," she warned the girl. When Roahn only gave a confused blink, Liara jerked her head over in the direction of the pit. "They're doing varren fights over there."

Now understanding, Roahn solemnly nodded her head, now able to pick up on the frenzied growls and high-pitched yips coming from over where the pit was. From the sound of things, like the scuffling of claws on bare rock, and the rabid snarls escaping the throats of the massive beasts, the fight was proceeding quite violently.

From the glimpses that Roahn could get between the tangle of krogan legs, every so often a varren would jump the height of the pit, the other combatant at its throat. It was hard to tell which varren was winning because both were stained with so much blood that their very skin was slick and black. Choking gurgles finally wafted upward as one varren's jaw managed to pierce the neck of his opponent. Krogan simultaneously cheered and groaned. Vials of ryncol were smashed in anger. A fight broke out between three krogan, ostensibly because one of them lost a bet. Dust clouds were kicked up as quick jets of blood sprayed out.

"So, how long are you guys planning on staying in town?" Wrex asked Shepard, ignoring the brewing melee that was going on behind them. "I also heard that you were having a little trouble on the homestead?"

Truthfully, Shepard was getting pretty tired of having to explain his situation over and over to people who were not privy to the whole story, but he resisted the temptation to sigh and roll his eyes, recognizing that Wrex was just being courteous… or as courteous as it was possible for a krogan to be.

"We're working on things," Shepard said as he crossed his arms over his chest. "Trouble's just coming all at us from the places we least expect. And… I don't know… we might stay for a couple of days. Not too long. Just to give us enough time to come up with a plan for what to do. Things have gotten a little crazy since I've been away."

"Hmm," Wrex considered. "Perhaps it's been a while since you've been out in the field. The Shepard I knew would've had a plan already."

"Yeah, well _that_ Shepard hasn't existed for more than twelve years," he slightly snapped a bit more aggressively than necessary, and he turned his head away shamefully.

Only that was the wrong way for him to look, because immediately Shepard spotted a painted depiction that had been colored directly upon a smoothened rock wall. An ancient mural laid down by the krogan before they had bombed their world to oblivion. Hues of dark red and brown came together to form an image of a segmented creature, worm-like, with a complex arrangement of tentacles, proboscis, and antennae adorning its head.

Shepard recognized that the krogan who had created this work of art were merely paying a tribute to Kalros, the so-called "mother of all thresher maws." Thresher maws were enormous subterranean carnivores that rarely ventured above ground unless their territory was disturbed. Kalros was the largest thresher maw ever recorded in history and had so impressed the original krogan who had laid down the painting in her honor. She had laid territory around this area at one point, but ever since her scuffle with a Reaper years back, Kalros had retreated to a less hectic home near the mountains. Kalros was a part of krogan legend, meant to both inspire and terrify those who would seek the presence of the maw.

Shepard could not stomach looking at the mural any longer and he gave a shiver, abruptly storming off to clear his head.

Roahn watched her father leave and glanced between him and the painting that he had been looking at. Somewhat perplexed, she turned to Liara for help. "I don't get it. It's just a picture of a thresher maw."

The quick dart of the asari's eyes to the side immediately drew suspicion upon her.

"What am I missing?" Roahn pressed.

Liara tentatively bit her lip, uncertain how she wanted to proceed. "Did… did your father ever talk to you about thresher maws before?"

"No, he didn't."

 _Of course he didn't_ , Liara thought in dismay. Well, if Shepard was going to get mad at her for telling her this, then he should have explained it himself a long time ago. "A little more than twenty years ago, Roahn, your father's team was attacked by thresher maws on Akuze. He was the only survivor."

Roahn quickly whirled to catch another glimpse of Shepard, but he was nowhere to be seen, having temporarily vacated the presence for some peace of mind.

"He rarely talked about it with anyone else," Liara added, hoping to assuage the girl somewhat. "It was something that he tried to keep locked away for years. He's never been completely okay when he had to face off against the maws later in his life. It's the one thing that has haunted him ever since I knew him. Trust me, you're not the only person he's kept secrets from."

"And…" Roahn began in a shaky voice, "…and how did _you_ find out about it?"

Liara's smile was sympathetic, but melancholy. As if she was ashamed to be privy to such an important piece of information that was at her purview to disperse. A huge responsibility—one she felt she was not ready to shoulder out of respect for the man she intensely cared about.

It was that same care and love that surrounded her protective instincts for his daughter. In the face of such yearning, would there be any other alternative for keeping secrets from Roahn?

Probably not.

Liara then shrugged almost sheepishly, as if she was trying to lighten the mood by brushing off the weightiness of the implications. "There was only _one_ person your father truly opened up to back when we were working together on the original Normandy. Getting _her_ to shed light on him after they had talked was not nearly as hard. I probably don't need to say any more, do I?"

"No," Roahn mustered with a shaky laugh, the answer quite obvious to her. "You really don't."

* * *

 _Something was wrong._

 _For the past hour, Tali could pinpoint a decisive note of dread lingering within the walls of the clinic. Quarians bustled to and fro, engrossed in their duties down the multitude of hallways. Gone were the cheery and confident attitudes of the resident staff that she had been introduced to today, now everyone seemed to be intensely absorbed in thought as they worked to check and re-check their findings._

 _This was had always frustrated Tali with doctors: they were always so cagey with their refusal to state things outright. They would rather analyze their data ad infinitum instead of getting right to the point._

 _In the absence of straight answers, Tali's own fear swelled._

 _Tali clenched a suited hand. She was still in her enviro-suit as her checkup did not require her to step out of it at all. All the diagnostics the doctors would be able to perform would be done with exterior scanning tools and simple blood tests. Risk of infection here was minimal, but that was not of any importance to Tali right now. There were other things she was worried about._

 _A sudden stab erupted near her gut—fresh pressure bloomed inside her, causing Tali to wince a little bit. The pain had been getting steadily worse for months now. But… this could not have been the same agony. She was so sure that she had successfully endured her illness. Yet she still hurt. The night sweats had been returning. Her appetite had waned. One morning, she could not even keep her breakfast down and she had vomited it into the sink. Tali's joints ached something fierce and she shut her eyes, refusing to believe that things were devolving like this._

 _She just could not believe it. She knew she must not give in._

 _At least she was not alone anymore, which did provide Tali a modicum of relief. Shepard was sitting in a chair next to the medical bench upon which she was perched in the room. He had been shuttled up here just a few minutes ago by Shala'Raan—he had intended to be present when the doctors would make their final diagnosis. Tali had been in the clinic since the early morning and had endured hour after hour of being poked, prodded, and having her blood drawn. She had steadfastly gone through this supposedly final procedure, her tiredness warping the remains of the day away._

 _Shepard looked up from the screen of his omni-tool, a six-day growth of stubble lining his cheeks and chin, and gave Tali a smile. A loving smile. A sign to silently tell her that everything was going to be all right._

 _In the face of optimism, how could Tali possibly despair?_

 _Finally, the lead doctor entered through the door, a datapad clenched in a hand. Both Tali and Shepard instinctively straightened, anxious to receive the news._

 _There were many moments in Tali's life which she would look back upon time after time again. The list in her head was filled with many of these important instants, nearly innumerable. Tali would conduct a thorough analysis of a few particular memories more often than not, wondering if there could have been anything that she could have done in order to make the end result better._

 _Today would create enough of those memories to satisfy a lifetime._

 _Her heart sinking, Tali gazed through tortured eyes as she listened to the doctor cut straight to the point, thankfully not extenuating the terrible meaning that he had been bidden to share. The throbbing noise in her ears threatened to pop and bleed, flooding her with deafness. Her lungs seemed to shrivel up, depriving her of air. Her skin felt like it was melting off of her as she lost all control of her body, descending into a shaking mass as the doctor's words hammered into her skull again… and again… and again…_

 _Her mind resonated with the revelation. Tali's own imagination was torturing her._

" _It has returned," had been the doctor's curt yet somber declaration._

 _Tali squeezed her eyes shut as she placed a hand on her abdomen. Now she knew why she had been feeling sharp cramps there for the past month, but she had hoped—no, prayed—that it had not been as she had feared. That she was not getting sick again. Why was this happening to her? Why?_

" _That can't be possible," she heard her husband protest as he stood up from his chair, aghast. "No… no… that doesn't make sense. She beat it. Tali beat the cancer. I… we… we all saw it! We had the results! It was in remission! The therapy killed the cancer. It… it was in remission…"_

 _The doctor's pained expression could only be discerned from the look in his eyes through his visor. He proceeded to blast up a hologram of Tali's body, and after he flitted a few filters away to look at key organ systems, he gestured to an area in Tali's abdomen for the benefit of the couple._

" _When cancer is in remission," the doctor explained, "especially with such a violent growth like this, there is always the chance that it could make a comeback. But Tali, your outlook has worsened, I'm afraid. The cancer… it has metastasized."_

 _The word was familiar to Tali yet she could not grasp its meaning. She lifted her head up as a fresh stab from her gut sent a slew of tears to her already watering eyes. "Metastasized?"_

" _To put it simply, it has spread at a furious rate. The cancer is no longer just in your ovaries, Tali, but it is now in your fallopian tubes, your abdominal lining, lymph nodes, and your liver. You have serous carcinoma—tumors—localized in your ovaries. The speed of its aggression is unlike anything we've ever seen and is considered to be classified as high-grade serous carcinoma."_

 _The doctor gestured to areas on the hologram of Tali's body where reddish clouds of infection were propagated within the representation of Tali's abdomen. The red coloration was described as a portrayal of the cancer—a simple visualization—and based on the screen, the cancer looked to be completely overwhelming Tali from within. Where the marked disease was indicated, Tali's body looked decayed, withered. There was no doubt in Tali's mind what was happening—she did not need a visual to indicate the truth to her._

" _How long do I have?" Tali whispered as she hunched over, still keeping a hand firmly plastered to her belly._

 _Not proceeding beyond sealed lips, Tali was thinking instead: how long do I have with my daughter?_

" _Tali!" Shepard exclaimed sharply before he firmly placed his hands upon her shoulders, denying her from moving. "You can't say that! You're going to get through this, just like you did the last time." To the doctor, Shepard now turned his attention. "What can Tali do? What can I do? There's got to be a way to make her better. We can't just give up right now."_

 _The doctor bore the expression that he was the inevitable bearer of bad tidings, a role he would have begged to have delegated to someone else. But in his position, reality needed to take precedent. The worst thing that he could possibly give to Tali and Shepard now were false hopes._

" _Unfortunately, because the cancer has recurred and because it has specifically recurred at a certain time frame, this means that your wife's illness will be difficult to treat. Recovery is possible… but I'm afraid that the chances at making a complete comeback is significantly worse than before."_

" _I don't understand. We've been able to treat cancer effectively for more than a century now. This shouldn't be a new development. How is this any different? Why can't Tali get better?"_

 _Tali realized that Shepard was even closer to losing it than she was. She could tell that his voice was ever so slightly beginning to crack, that his eyes were darting all over the place, and the grip on her shoulders had been slowly tensing more and more as he spoke._

 _The doctor took a breath and raised a hand to calm Shepard down. "Despite all we know about cancer, it is still a disease whose very characteristic is its adaptability. One treatment for a certain type of cancer will only work on that one type of cancer and the problem is increased tenfold when each species reacts to cancer a little differently. The issue is compounded even more when you take a recurrence into account. When cancer recurs, it has evolved to resist certain drugs—unfortunately, which happen the types of drugs used for treatment that are less invasive and less toxic to the body. The cancer has therefore adapted to the prior treatment, which may make things problematic in the near future."_

" _But there is a treatment for this, yes? Let's not wait any longer! Let's start her on chemotherapy right away!"_

 _The doctor shook his head and sighed. "Chemotherapy will not be the first line of defense here. Like I said before, the cancer has built up a resistance to platinum-based drugs, known as platins. Those drugs are typically the first line of defense only because they don't have as many side effects. Because of this newfound resistance, any chemotherapy we enact will have to utilize such drugs like vincristine or dactinomycin, and these contain all the horrible side effects that you want to avoid. Vomiting, ulcers in the mouth, bone marrow being suppressed, loss of hair. Some of these compounds might even cause new types of cancer in the future if we decide to go down that route. Yet that isn't even my choice to make, but hers."_

 _The doctor gestured to Tali at that and blinked sympathetically before proceeding._

" _You don't need to make a decision right away, but the sooner you do make your choice, the better. But I strongly suggest the first thing that must be done is to have Tali booked for debulking surgery immediately."_

" _What will that do?" Shepard asked._

" _We will surgically remove as much of the tumor in her body as we can. In its current form, it will be impossible to remove it fully, I must warn you, and because of its extensive nature, we won't be able to debulk the tumor more than once. However, the what is left of the tumor afterward will be more sensitive to chemotherapy, so the line of thinking is that it will be more receptive to any treatment we do… if you decide to bulk debulking surgery."_

 _Shepard cursed under his breath and rubbed at his eyes tiredly. The man was staggering in place while Tali stared off into space next to him. Shepard felt like he had aged fifty years in five minutes. Raw, gnawing pain began clawing under his flesh, making him itch and prickle._

" _Where did this come from?" he muttered through the hands that were covering his face. "We had been so careful. We triple-checked every single thing. I thought she was doing so well…"_

" _Most cancers tend to have very subtle early warning signs," the doctor explained in a regretful manner, obviously upset that he could not provide more concrete information. "Some are so subtle that they tend to get misdiagnosed for other illnesses. Even the early stages of cancer can be painless, all things considered. There are just so many risk factors and so many other aspects to consider that identifying the one thing that caused the cancer to crop up is, honestly, not going to be possible." The quarian doctor then consulted his notes on his omni-tool before proceeding again. "But what I can tell you is that this cancer was definitely influenced by outside components. Based on the speed of how much the cancer has spread, it does not seem likely that this is a normal form of ovarian cancer, but I cannot determine anything other than that."_

" _Then… what's the prognosis going to be like?" Shepard asked. "I don't want to hear any sugarcoating of this thing. Can Tali get better?"_

 _There was a noticeable swallow from the doctor. "No sugarcoating?"_

" _That's right."_

 _The doctor could not bear to make eye contact for very long and he looked away for a critical moment. "Tali has a 90% chance to succumbing to the disease."_

 _The room became so quiet you could have dropped a speck of dust onto the ground and everyone would have picked it up. Shepard stood, his mouth agape, as his grip on his wife finally relaxed in shock._

 _In denial, Shepard's head began to rapidly shake back and forth. "No… no…" he whispered, the word barely able to escape past his lips. "Not acceptable. That's not acceptable. I… I want… I want a second opinion."_

" _I am the second opinion," the doctor emphasized, backbone steeling his words. "Colleagues from two different hospitals—one on Earth and one on the Citadel—have both concurred with my conclusion. I have their testimonies to view right now, if you wish."_

 _For a long time, nobody spoke. Even the muted chatter of conversation outside the room had become silent. Shepard stood, not knowing what to think. The doctor kept his ground, his frosted expression mournful and helpless. And Tali…_

" _Can you give me a minute?" she whispered, her voice so faint it might as well have been a feather riding the wind. She clenched a hand around Shepard's wrist. "Alone with my husband."_

 _The doctor nodded at once, grabbing back his datapad before edging out the door backwards. "At once, Tali. Just… let me know when you're ready to continue, okay?"_

 _Tali did not utter one more word for five more minutes, long after the doctor had left her presence. Her grip on Shepard's wrist flexed and trembled, her emotions unable to process themselves into clear thoughts. Her breath heaved and fluttered. She tried to focus on Shepard's face, to look straight into his eyes and to see that ever-present confidence that lived within his very gaze. Yet when she stared straight at him, only despair was reflected back at her. For the first time in Tali's life, she saw her husband completely at a loss, unsure of how to proceed._

 _She reached up to touch his face, but suddenly pulled her hand back when the haunting laughter of a child flitted into her ears. In a stupor, Tali glanced over and immediately realized she was hallucinating as she saw Roahn sitting patiently on the floor, looking up at her as the girl let out another cheerful laugh._

 _The laughter lingered in Tali's brain, building up and up in volume until it became a full-bodied roar. The image of Roahn continued to shriek in revelry, now holding out her arms and constantly calling, "Mommy! Mommy!" Tali moaned and fumbled at the switch to turn off her auditory sensors, but the voice of her daughter persisted. It burrowed into her mind, digging through gray matter to reach the vulnerable core of her thoughts. It infested her very being, clawing away the tumorous rot to reside in its place._

 _Roahn still laughed long after Tali could no longer see her._

 _Giggling._

 _Taunting._

 _The last lingering vestige of normality, the cruelest insult that could ever cut deep at Tali. To not be able to watch her daughter grow up._

 _In that second, Tali snapped._

 _Shrieking hysterically, Tali flew from the bench, past her husband's arms, and hurled herself at the wall of opaque glass. She slid helplessly down its surface as she frantically beat her fists upon the thick surface. Her blows were methodical, yet carried enough power to crack the glass. Spiderwebs of fractures began to form from where she hammered the wall, spiraling out of control and threatening to bring everything down._

 _All the bile that inhabited Tali, all of the rage, the pain, and regret flowed out of her in the form of her miserable screams. Her voice ran hoarse in seconds. Her throat tore and Tali could taste blood. Still she screamed. She screamed because she knew she had no future, that she would not be there for her husband, for her daughter, when all she had ever wanted in her short, sorry life was to have a family, to come home to people who loved her._

 _She had even been denied that._

 _When Shepard finally pulled Tali away from the wall, she fell limp almost at once. The world became grayer for the quarian as her breathing became shallow. Tendrils of milky light rolled over her, encroaching with the blackness, bringing upon the solid dark._

 _Tali could not even hear Shepard calling her name in a panic._

 _She wanted to tell him that she was so sorry, but unconsciousness fell upon her before she had the chance to do so._

Shepard was then cruelly ejected from his thoughts in that moment, the memories too painful for him to fully sit through. A faint flutter of hot wind mustered a pathetic push across his face, along with the burnt scent of baking sand. He tasted sour dust on his tongue and the stimuli of Tuchanka finally tore him from that terrible day, returning him to where he was sitting upon the grand staircase, able to perceive the magnificent canyon below him where clan Urdnot resided.

Shepard then opened his eyes again as the sound of footsteps crunched up toward where he was sitting. He tilted his head down to face Wrex as he ascended the stairs below him, Garrus bringing up the rear behind the krogan. Wrex was carrying a tray of something in one arm that looked to Shepard like a piece of diseased meat, for it was a reddish-white slab that had a slight green tinge to it. Whatever it was, it looked unappetizing.

"Bad time?" Wrex intoned as he climbed the final steps to reach where Shepard sat. Shepard shook his head, which gave Wrex the opening to sit down on the step beside the human. "Hungry? I can get you something from the scoutmaster," the krogan lowered his tray down into his lap, allowing Shepard to get a more detailed look at the meat that Wrex had chosen to consume. He certainly could get a better _whiff_ of it, that was for sure. Smelled like burning rubber mixed with the rotting stench of carrion.

"Not really," Shepard said honestly—his appetite had not really been raising too much of a stir today and the remains of it had practically fled when Wrex had shoved… whatever this was in front of his face. "I had a bite to eat on my ship."

Wrex chuckled as he tipped the tray upwards and swallowed the meat in one bite. "If you change your mind, let me know. I wouldn't eat _this_ , by the way. Not saying it's bad but it's probably too much for you to handle. Thresher steaks aren't really good for humans to ingest. They're still chock-full of thresher acid in the meat. Burn a hole right through your stomach if you have too much."

"Now I don't feel bad for not partaking. Thresher steak isn't exactly something that I'm looking to cross off on my bucket list."

"Hey, this thresher should have some sentimental value to you. After all, you were the one who brought it down."

Shepard started to laugh but quickly quieted once he realized that Wrex was being serious. "Wrex, the last maw I killed was fifteen years ago."

"Maws have a lot of meat to them, didn't you know?" Wrex asked genially, obviously deriving a lot of glee from Shepard's horrified expression. "Couldn't just leave a good carcass like that out in the sun to go to waste."

"How the hell have you kept the rest of it preserved for so long? That steak should've been completely rotted by now."

"Hey, Tuchanka might not have a great many natural resources to dish out, but one thing that we do have a ton of is salt. We have so many salt mines we can produce more than a trillion tons of salt in just a couple of weeks. Might as well put that salt to good use, eh?"

Shepard was inclined to agree, but his stomach was twisting itself up in knots right now that he was finding it hard to concentrate except on the idea of consuming a fifteen-year-old steak. The prospect was not all that pleasant to think about.

Between that and his recent recollection regarding his wife, Shepard was so distracted that he almost did not hear Wrex's follow-up question right away.

"Kids. They're a struggle, aren't they?"

Shepard jerked and twisted around, shaking off his lethargy as Wrex placidly stared back at him. "I… I guess. Why do you ask?"

"Eh, it's something that I noticed. You and Roahn seem to be on… less than ideal terms right now."

Shepard dimly nodded and folded his hands over his lap as he stared out off into the valley. "It's tough to explain, Wrex. Tougher even to understand. It's just… I expected things to be easier, is all."

Wrex now procured a flask of ryncol from his hip and took a swig from it, a gesture of relaxation. The krogan leaned back slightly and tapped his fingers upon an armored leg. "I hear that. Parent to parent, Shepard, dealing with kids is never an easy task. Trust me."

"No, I don't disagree," Shepard said as he abruptly stood from the steps of the staircase and paced furious upon the dusty ground. "It's just that Roahn expects me to be perfect all the time. Perfect. _Me_." Shepard snorted in derision. "To her, being perfect means that I should not possess any flaws that she can easily discern. Every time I do disappoint her, it's like I'm killing one of her dreams. In her eyes, I'm ' _Commander Shepard_.' No matter how many times I tell her, she has difficulty shedding her mental image of me. I apparently should not make mistakes. But when I do, she's horrified by the fact that I'm human. She expects me to be a hero and yet I consistently fail her when I give her proof to the contrary. I _can't_ be the father she expects me to be, Wrex"

Wrex took all this in with a pensive nod. "Kids like having role models to latch onto. It's something that goes away with age. However, it's a bit easier for krogans because we have so many warlords and warriors to celebrate in our culture. To my kids, fighting in the war doesn't carry all that much weight. It takes a lot to impress them."

"But _you_ don't have that many obstacles to overcome," Shepard sighed. "Especially when I'm being endlessly compared to Tali. Now, _she_ was a saint through and through. She was the closest thing to perfect that anyone could ever imagine. And… and Roahn recognized that! That girl _adored_ her mother. She was the one Roahn loved the most… for good reason. I'm the one who's been fucking up time after time again. I can't replace what Roahn has lost… and because I'm such a shitty parent I don't have a chance at giving her an ideal life."

The aged krogan finally raised a hand and pointed at Shepard after giving a slow blink. The enormous alien rotated on the step slightly with a grinding noise, the stone grumbling under the intense weight.

"If you're looking for someone to help justify your self-pity, Shepard, sorry to say that I'm not the one you should bemoan yourself to," Wrex indicated sternly. "You do remember that you're talking to the same person who ended up killing his own father? _That_ was a shitty parent. Less than half a mile away is the spot where I put him down in self-defense, all because he had become a tyrannical lunatic. It was either him or me in that one moment, and I spilt his blood without hesitation. I don't feel any remorse for the man, because I never truly knew or understood him. In the end, he'd be a stranger to me if we didn't share blood. He was nothing to me then and he's still nothing to me now. But _you_ , Shepard, are not like my father." The krogan emphasized that with a hefty prod to Shepard's shoulder. "That is a tier you will never reach in your life, because you're so radically different."

"I appreciate the sentiment, Wrex, but that doesn't change the fact that I'm still _failing_ that girl."

Wrex gave another excruciatingly long blink of his blood-red eyes. "Are you? From where I sit, the fact that you're recognizing that you still have areas to improve upon and are making determined steps to fix them is not a sign that you're failing. If my father is as low as one could sink, you're not even halfway down the shaft."

Idly picking at his jacket, Shepard shook his head. "If I keep up with the way I'm going, I'll reach the bottom in no time at all. I helped save the universe, Wrex, and yet I'm unable to live up to the standard Tali set. Roahn doesn't know it, but she does have a point. If I really was able to do all the things that I did, why is raising a kid so difficult?"

Across from Shepard, the krogan pondered for a moment as he decided how to delicately broach the situation with Shepard. "I'm not the authority on parenting, Shepard," the grizzled krogan said to the seasoned human. "I can't pretend to fully understand your problem because I've never had to deal with something like it before. Nor can I offer a solution that will fix everything in your life."

"I know," Shepard said morosely but Wrex was not finished.

"But even I'm sure that if you continue to do what you're doing, to be honest and forthright with Roahn, she will start to see that you're being sincere. You can still be a role model for your daughter, Shepard, but it won't happen overnight. Sometimes… sometimes kids need to figure these things out on their own. Forcing them won't help anything. They need to come up with their own determination for who you are as a person. Simply telling them what to think won't change anything."

Shepard threw out his arms in exasperation. "So what do you suggest that I do?"

Wrex then gave a shrug before rising to his feet to meet the human. Reaching out, Wrex provided one last, lingering poke to Shepard's chest, forcing him back a step.

"Don't just _tell_ Roahn who you are. _Show_ her who you are. If you're at all the virtuous and empathetic son of a bitch I've always known you to be, there's no doubt that Roahn will see you that way very soon."

* * *

Completing its arc through the air, a rock sailed above the ground before finally impacting upon a sunken bed of boulders. Ferrite and pyrite momentarily clashed, sending out precious few sparks to briefly alight. The force from the violent friction was rapidly eradicated and the rock nestled into a dark crevasse between the bigger stones.

Her arm following through with its motion, Roahn continued to scowl as she summarily bent to pick up another rock, trying desperately to amuse herself as she occupied the peak of a shallow hill. Roahn tossed the next stone up and down a few times, dirt rubbing into the material of her enviro-suit as she clenched it tightly between her three fingers. Her eyes then hardening, Roahn took a giant lunge and simultaneously hurled the missile, letting it sail from her fingers to make a sharp clap as rock smashed against rock less than a second later.

" _Bosh'tet_ ," she muttered to herself as she stumbled on the hill, kicking up dust clouds as she went.

"Something bothering you, Roahn?" a light voice behind her floated.

Roahn turned around to see Liara T'Soni cresting the hill to stand beside her, an affectionate grin on her face. Roahn sighed as she bent down to pluck another stone from the ground again, biting her lip to quell her inherent fury.

"Yes," she merely said as she chucked the rock, no longer paying attention to where she was aiming. "You could say that."

"You don't need to tell me what it is," Liara took a seat on a rectangular stone block that protruded from the base of the krogan temple that had been set within the valley. "Something's been going on between you and your father since Thessia."

"Longer than that," Roahn corrected. An idea soon came to her and she twiddled her fingers as she turned to face the asari, her nervousness with speaking to the famed doctor no longer impacting her so harshly anymore. "How long have you known my dad, Liara? Do you think that trying to keep his whole life from me was a good idea? I don't know how I could justify such a thing, to be honest."

Liara looked pained as she tried to speak frankly without being insulting. "I don't know if I can say anything about your father—,"

That was not the answer Roahn wanted to hear and she rolled her eyes in annoyance. "Typical," Roahn snorted savagely as she chucked another rock in anger. "You can't even _talk_ about him in even the slightest critical tone."

That only made Liara's face flush and her expression momentarily darkened. Roahn then felt a twinge in her throat. She might have gone too far just then. Did Liara really deserve to be on the receiving end of all the barbs that Roahn had thrown her way? Immediately, Roahn wished she could take the comment back.

But instead of making a quip right back to fuel the girl's unpredictable animosity, Liara just clenched her hands and took a breath before returning her gaze to the girl. "Roahn, I realize that you're frustrated that your father has not told you everything about his life just yet. But I know he has his reasons. He hasn't been deliberately keeping you in the dark simply out of cruelty, you know."

"Easy for _you_ to say," Roahn retorted. "But for years, I've had to endure the whispers and stares from my friends all because they knew more about my father than I did. In the past couple of weeks, I only just found out that my mother had once been accused of treason by her own people, that my father had _died_ over Alchera and had been resurrected by some criminal organization, that it was his choice that caused Ashley Williams to be killed on Virmire, and that he helped the asari government cover up their crimes on Thessia! How else could I possibly react to that?! Liara, my father—your _friend_ —hid his entire life from me! Can you at least give me a reason why he would do something like that? How come I have to be the last person to find out why my dad is considered to be a hero? Why should his daughter not be privy to all of this? Why, Liara? _Why?!_ "

There were a lot of questions the girl had just posed and none of them were easy ones to answer. Only now was Liara beginning to get an idea of just how astute Roahn was. The girl missed nothing, it seemed. She was keenly aware of her role and heritage… but she was struggling to comprehend how she fit into the whole picture. On top of that, Roahn was still trying to justify decisions her father had made apparently long before she had ever been born—what further insight could Liara possibly hope to provide that would not seem like she would be stepping on Shepard's toes? Was this really an issue that was within her domain to solve, or would she be denying Shepard his own chance to make his daughter understand?

There was an overhang nearby that provided a curtain of shadow from the punishing sun of Tuchanka. Liara's head was starting to feel overwhelmingly hot and she scooted over to give herself some respite from the intense rays, motioning for Roahn to follow at the same time.

"Do you want to know what I think?" Liara asked the girl as she leaned against the cold stone of the temple.

" _Yes_ ," Roahn pressed insistently, blinking to adjust her eyes once she was out of the sun as well.

"In all the years I've known your father, he's never been one to act without some form of a plan. Perhaps he's been biding his time with you, Roahn, trying to see if you're mature enough for some of the things he so desperately has been wanting to tell you."

Something that the asari said did not click right with Roahn and she did a double-take. "What do you mean… he's been _wanting_ to tell me? That… that's not it at all. He would have kept silent about his life for as long as he lived if not—,"

"I'm just telling you what I think," Liara said as she made a gentle yet direct motion of her hand, cutting Roahn off. "I've known your father for more than a decade, Roahn, and I have trouble believing that he would seriously consider completely keeping you in the dark about his entire life. You remember what I told you about the maws?"

Roahn would have trouble forgetting that. The flash of tightness upon her father's face. His shaking fists, his wandering gaze. His abrupt departure.

"Your father is a very emotional man," Liara said to Roahn gently. "But he's always had trouble opening himself up to people. He prefers to conceal his fears by building up this exterior of a calm and collected commander, effortlessly projecting an air of determination. Make no mistake, Roahn, the reason why your father has probably waited for so long to tell you about himself is that he was never trying to hide anything from you… but that he was afraid of what you might think of him when he did."

Confronted with this knowledge, Roahn did not respond right away. Instead, she crossed her arms as she strongly considered Liara's words, her eyes slanting downwards and she intensely mulled over her thoughts.

"Your father _knows_ how smart you are," Liara emphasized as she knelt down to speak to the girl at her level. "He would never think that he could possibly keep the truth of who he was from you forever. I just think that he wanted to tell you when he felt that you were absolutely ready, to have you learn at your own pace. He's _trying_ , Roahn. Believe me, Shepard is trying."

"He should have tried harder," Roahn sulked as she raised her head up a bit, staring off into the valley as she refused to meet Liara's eyes. "He waited too long. _Mom_ would've told me everything a long time ago, at least."

Roahn kicked at the ground, stirring up a cloud of dust, before she started to stomp back out into the sunlight, the glare reflecting off her visor.

After making it a few paces, she suddenly whirled and pointed at Liara, particulates orbiting around her in a chalky swath.

"If _you_ were in my father's position, would you do the same thing?"

There was a noticeable period of time that elapsed—a bracket in which it would have been considered a decent opportunity for Liara to respond, to profoundly refute Roahn's accusation to assuage the girl, to tell her the answer that she was obviously expecting to hear.

Instead, the moment slipped away from Liara as she faltered, weak in the face of defying her friend. To keep up such a tiny lie for the sake of his daughter.

Unfortunately, Roahn saw right through it.

"That's what I thought," she bitterly sighed as she turned smartly on her heel to make it down the ramp, seeking to be alone.

Lost in the shade of the temple, Liara could only look away from the departing girl, worried that she too had fallen down a few pegs in Roahn's book.

* * *

 **A/N: If you thought you were spoiled when RedCenturionG recently released his latest chapter for "Equilibrium: Crusader," then consider this to be a double whammy for any of your Talimancer folks out there. A nice thing to kick off the weekend with. Except that, in his story, Tali is alive and well whereas with Cenotaph... she isn't. Still, at least you've got a couple different perspectives out there. The well of creativity has not dried up yet, mind you!**

 **As always, to the people who take the time to leave their critical thoughts, you have my appreciation. I hope that I have been able to answer any questions or concerns to your satisfaction.**

 **Playlist:**

 **Cancer: "Should You Choose To Accept..." by Lorne Balfe from the film _Mission Impossible: Fallout_**

 **Parental Advice: "Halfway to Hong Kong" by James Newton Howard from the film _The Dark Knight_**

 **Roahn Talks to Liara: "Temptations" by Austin Wintory from the video game _Journey_**


	15. Chapter 15: In Deference to the Future

" _Mr. Koenig, your social media profiles paint you as a very exuberant and a rather profane individual—traits which are admittedly not all that uncommon amongst CEOs—but the way that you proudly display such attributes, while not appearing to take into account your relative importance that you supposedly represent within the government, tells us that your overall demeanor is not suited to your industry. Especially taking into account your rather… generous penchant for alcohol that you've been so keen on self-documenting."  
_ Sen. Ibanez, EU – Spain

" _You going to give me a lecture on drinking too, ma'am?"_  
Erich Koenig, CEO – Chimera

" _We're now merely trying to ascertain whether it was your behavior or your company's performance that enabled Chimera to win over the Alliance contract as its premier service operator. Based on just this swath of evidence, it is rather evident that the Alliance has elected to ignore your brazen outlook on life in favor of the opportunities they feel Chimera is able to provide. But I'm not sure if that tradeoff appears to have been worth it."_  
Sen. Ibanez, EU – Spain

" _Let me get this straight… you're reevaluating Chimera's contract with the Alliance purely from the fact that I like to go out and drink with friends?"  
_ Erich Koenig, CEO – Chimera

" _You call it just drinking?"_  
Sen. Ibanez, EU – Spain

" _Yes, Senator, I do."_  
Erich Koenig, CEO – Chimera

" _Mr. Koenig, your 'friends' videotaped a minute and a half long video of you continuously throwing up outside of an establishment that appears to be a bar on the island of St. Barbados. 'Just drinking' vaguely implies that your encounter was more casual. The video evidence sort of indicates that you had gone further than casual, in contrast. Would you say that the end result in that video is a regular occurrence for every time you frequent a place that serves alcohol with your friends?"  
_ Sen. Ibanez, EU – Spain

" _Can you define 'regular occurrence?'"_  
Erich Koenig, CEO – Chimera

* * *

 _Tuchanka_

A six-wheeled, three-story behemoth of a transport, the tomkah was a sight to behold as it scampered along the crusted and battle-scarred ground of Tuchanka. Its massive shock absorbers were designed to withstand punishing variances in terrain, meaning that it could scale small buildings without taking a significant chunk of its top speed away. It was lightly armed, by krogan standards, with only a singular turret rotating upon a swivel up top. But what the tomkah lacked in firepower, it made up for in armor. It could even withstand the detonation of a nuclear explosion from up to a few miles from the epicenter. Granted, such a test of its abilities had not been put to use for some time, but the krogan were never one to half-ass their weapons of war.

Remains of stone foundations and crumpled pieces of other disabled tomkahs littered the road, despite the krogan's best efforts at cleaning up over the years—their centuries of constantly procrastinating with tidying up after themselves had resulted in quite the mess for them to overcome. The tomkah ran over all obstructions without worry. A few pyjaks also had the misfortune of wandering directly into the path of the encroaching vehicle, drawn by the sound of the engines. Their primitive brains had still not yet deciphered the fact that a bull-rushing tomkah did not have the ability to spare anything the courtesy of slowing down to allow errant animals to cross its path safely. These pyjaks were also run over, barely registering as a bump to the driver, who probably had not even saw fit to reduce his speed any. Survival of the fittest ran supreme on Tuchanka.

The tomkah was only travelling for about ten minutes after clearing the center of the Urdnot camp. At its top speed, the vehicle had the ability to reach over a hundred miles an hour quite easily, despite the terrible terrain. There was still enough of the original highway infrastructure still standing to allow a fair bit of traffic to roam across the land, which was what the driver of the tomkah dutifully kept onto. After ten kilometers of road had been covered, the brakes on the tomkah gradually applied themselves, producing a fierce squeal as the wheels slowly ground to a halt. The tomkah jerked violently once as all its kinetic energy finally departed, leaving the idling vehicle standing still.

A hatch opened between the first and second wheels, allowing the occupants to spill out.

"Feels like yesterday since I was back here!" Wrex crowed as he jumped from the black insides of the hatch, happily stretching his arms out.

"No doubt," Garrus groused behind him to the others as he exited, a hand rubbing at a sore spot upon his neck. "We only have a tenth of his lifespan. A year probably feels like a day to him."

Shepard shared in that sentiment as he clumsily managed to extricate himself from the tomkah. The ride over had not been a comfortable one, as the krogan had not exactly built the tomkahs to be at all luxurious. He had accumulated many cricks on his body as a result. A tomkah on Tuchanka made an Alliance Mako feel like a pleasure yacht. The ride had been all around awful from the jostling and the constantly vibrating interior panels, not to mention that the seats lacked cushions to pad themselves from the turbulence. Throughout the journey, the tomkah had always seemed to be two seconds away from completely splitting in half, for it was so shoddily built. There was "military-grade" and then there was "krogan-grade." Shepard made a note to never complain about the quality of an Alliance vessel ever again.

But maybe Shepard felt that he had to chalk some of his injuries up due to age, as Roahn managed to hop out, seemingly unaffected from the ride. Her attitude towards him had cooled to the point where she was not actively avoiding his presence, but it was still rather difficult to make eye contact with her.

Roahn made a beeline for Wrex, who was standing near the guardrail at the edge of the highway. A thin staircase trailed down to a stone plaza, where a pyramidal structure stood tall amidst the haze of smoke and ozone that stained the otherwise caramel sky.

Now that they were out in the open, Shepard could now perceive the array of Alliance dreadnoughts in the sky a lot more easily. They hovered many miles off the surface, yet their gargantuan shape threatened to blot out the scorched sky, the hazy light casting their hulls into a perpetual shadow. The closest warship drifted lazily over the charred and blasted battleplain just a few miles away, although Shepard got this uneasy feeling in his stomach that if the dreadnought were to even twitch just a bit to the right, it would be right overhead his position.

He had developed a phobia long ago of being underneath large ships. After seeing so many fall out of the sky, blasted in half from gigantic war machines, the sight of such enormous vessels miraculously hanging in the air filled Shepard with dread more than it did hope, regardless of whose side these Alliance ships were on.

The stone building was the only thing left standing on its own devices in the area, or at least it was the tallest object. Another kilometer past it, from where Shepard was standing, he was able to see a stripe of metal debris, spread out over tangles of ancient and hardy ruins. The cold metal clashed with the warm sandy color of the rock—evidence that its previous form had not been a part of Tuchanka since the beginning, for Shepard knew that what he was looking at had been an enormous metal structure, spear-like, that had once punctured the clouds swirling high above it. It had collapsed years ago, its shiny innards dispersed along the ground for the sand to reclaim it—the old Tuchanka swallowing the new. In its death throes, the collapse of the structure had taken out a larger ingot-like fabrication beside it, cracking ore and rock in half and grinding them to powder.

Past Wrex's outstretched arm marked the birthplace of the rejuvenated krogan, but Shepard knew as well as Wrex did, that this was also a gravesite. A mausoleum for where his tortured memories frequently came to roost.

"Our next reconstruction phase will begin here in a few years," Wrex was saying as his arm beat a trail through the swirling winds of dust. "A short while for you lot, but not that far off for us. The Shroud did a lot of damage when it came down. Took out both the maw hammers, not to mention a fair amount of the temple. Left quite the mess behind. It's something that we've been putting off too long, admittedly, but our affairs over at the main camp took most of our attention away. They have since been addressed, for the most part. Now some of the real work can get done."

It was sort of difficult for Roahn to exactly know what Wrex was referring to, because Tuchanka's landscape was not all that forgiving for a newcomer to comprehend. Mile after mile of shattered buildings textured the ground, skeletal remains of satellite dishes crumpled amongst the boulevards, and mountainous sand dunes had been blown in from the nuclear winds, absorbing everything in their path. Even the krogan had not yet found a way to completely mitigate nature's bite on Tuchanka, evidentially. On any other world, they would be well suited as conquerors. Here, they were struggling to keep from being conquered. Yet krogan were at their best when challenged—it was always good for them to have an antagonist to rally against, even when their foe had no corporeal form.

"Have the other clans shown any anger at the loss of this site?" Liara asked as she leaned her forearms against the guardrail, staring off into the shattered plain. "This _was_ a significant area before it had been destroyed."

Wrex rumbled out a laugh. "Actually, it's only grown in legend after the fact. We're not liable to forget the site where Kalros dragged a Reaper into the heart of Tuchanka, whereupon it's still being digested, probably. And despite the Shroud crushing a lot of original architecture when it fell, the remaining site holds a lot of importance thanks to Mordin curing the genophage there. If anything, we're all too eager to finally restore this place, give it more significant touches."

Roahn, standing by, absorbed the talk sagely. So, Kalros had been _here_ , specifically, and she had killed a Reaper—the only thresher maw known to have done so. Reapers were quite large to begin with so any maw that had the ability to bring one down would ostensibly command universal respect. No wonder the krogan spoke of that thresher maw with such admiration. It must have been quite the sight to have witnessed a maw the size of a capital ship thrust itself out from the ground and to drag an entire Reaper underneath the earth. A god of flesh consuming a god of metal. Twin titans in a ferocious clash, much like the legends of old! A duel straight out of a fairytale. Roahn could almost picture the battle in her mind—the sharp tang of ozone from a Reaper's blast, the high-pitched scream of a thresher maw, hot blood being splattered across the crumbled face of a pyramid, the tortured wail as the Reaper was coiled up by the maw's lengthy body. The girl shivered, awed at the images her imagination was able to conjure.

Dark clouds were now starting to gather on the horizon, the color of burnt firewood. Even through her mask, Roahn could smell the charred and smoky aroma of scorched sand as the front blew her way. Her enviro-suit protected her from the stinging pellets being thrown up and she could hear soft pings echo away as each individual grain tapped against her mask.

"Storm's coming," Wrex commented as he analyzed the changing climate. "We'll have some more protection down below."

Everyone else grumbled their agreements and began to follow Wrex down the staircase towards the entrance to the ruins. Roahn, still transfixed by the radioactive landscape, lingered a bit more upon the side of the highway, gusts of wind tugging at her small body and _sehni_ , almost forcing her back a step had she not been clinging upon a guardrail for support.

Her sixth sense gave a slight twinge and Roahn imperceptibly shifted her head a bit to the side, her peripheral vision picking up a person standing right next to her, having moved into place without her realizing it.

Roahn looked over and saw Shepard leaning over in the exact same pose she had adopted, staring pensively out towards the shifting sands, watching the low-cropped waves of powder swirl close to the ground like liquid gold. She slowly blinked as she appraised her father, but did not shy away. An icicle began to well up in her heart again, but the fiery blaze of indigence was melting it simultaneously. She stayed where she was.

"A lot to take in, isn't it?" Shepard asked, with the air of someone nearly about to ask how they found the weather.

Roahn just mustered a bitter shrug. "It is," she admitted, unable to manage even a white lie to her father. "Look, dad… I—,"

"You don't need to say anything," Shepard interrupted as he turned to face Roahn. "I do, however."

This was it, Roahn figured. She braced herself, ready for the scathing tone her father was surely going to adopt in berating her presumably for acting in an immature manner yesterday.

"I need to _apologize_ to you, Roahn," Shepard said instead.

Roahn had already prepared a sharp retort back that she had almost unleashed it after her father finished speaking, only to stuff it back down her throat when she realized just in time that he had not taken the route she had thought he would pursue.

"I've been asking a lot of you over the last couple of weeks," Shepard continued as he folded his hands behind his back, oblivious to Roahn's shock, "and I know that things have been… quite difficult for us. If you want to blame me for all that's happened, I can't say that I'll disagree with you there. But you have been behaving so admirably regardless that it's been easy for me to forget that you have limits. Had I known better I would have worked to break things to you earlier. If only I'd known."

The girl did not know what to say. All along Roahn had convinced herself that her father had been completely blind to his inability to connect with her on a basic emotional level, and now he just openly admitted this very fact to her. To say that she was at a loss for words now was an understatement.

Shepard took his daughter's silence as a sign for him to continue. "My fears have only been compounded over the years, Roahn. For too long I've deluded myself to a line of thinking that life for us would always be peaceful, that there would never have been an occasion to relive my experiences to you, because you there would never have been a reason to learn from what I did. I saw you back then as my bright, earnest daughter, and I didn't want to corrupt that with the memories that have infected my head. But then your mother died… and now with this Chimera business… I've been punished for my delaying. I've had to unload so much knowledge unto you that I never once tried to put myself in your shoes. I never realized that you could be overwhelmed so easily by the decisions I've made, the things that I've seen. I've been forcing you to grow up too quickly and it's my fault for not preparing you earlier."

With a great deal of effort, Roahn turned to the side so that she could appraise Shepard fully, now gracing him with her complete attention. "If we weren't being chased across the galaxy, would you still have told me about your life?"

It took Shepard a few seconds to formulate a careful answer. "Perhaps eventually," he admitted. "Probably not this soon, but when I felt for certain that you were ready." He leaned the side of his body against the guardrail as he kept his hands clenched together. "Yet… after all that has happened, and after all I've already revealed to you, you have proved that you have indeed been ready for some time. I only needed more time to break things to you more slowly instead of at this rapid-fire pace. It's unfair to you, Roahn, and that's why I'm sorry."

"But… I _need_ to be caught up at this fast pace," Roahn emphasized. "Don't you see, dad? I _have_ to learn all about you. You've turned on a tap and you can't turn it back."

"Roahn, it's _unhealthy_ —how much I've told you—,"

"No," Roahn pointed. "Dad, it's not unhealthy. It's _necessary_. I still don't understand everything, and that's the problem. It's _because_ I didn't understand that I got angry at you on Thessia. I'm constantly coming back to the lessons taught to me by my mentors: ' _anger does not matter when your position is wrong._ ' After talking to Liara and Wrex, I'm only now starting to get the big picture. Especially when Liara told me about Akuze… how you were the only survivor of your unit. Everywhere I turn, with each new person that I talk to, there's always something for me to discover. Every new thing that I learn only makes me realize your rationale and… and who you are as a person."

The mere mention of Akuze caused Shepard to curl his lip, once again dismayed at the reminder of that terrible day, but he still kept his gaze magnified upon his daughter, waiting to hear her complete thoughts.

"Seeing all this," Roahn swept her arm out, gesturing to the apocalyptic wasteland stretching beyond their field of vision, "just hammers it home for me. I now realize just how tired you were after the war, that you just wanted everything to… to go away. That you and mom just wanted to hide in some corner of the galaxy and disappear. If anything, I haven't been appreciative for what you've been doing for me. What you've _already_ done. For the first time in my life, you haven't been treating me like a little girl. And… what I'm trying to say is that… I don't want you to stop."

Shepard's smile came naturally to his face. There was just so much about Roahn that was reflective of his own experiences. The novice continually seeking out others for clarity, for knowledge. It was what he had done with Tali when she had first joined the Normandy—his natural interest in her and the quarian lifestyle had resulted in him making many frequent trips to her workstation at the drive core, eager to learn something new about her upbringing and society, unknowingly offering many chances to grow closer to her.

This natural desire for knowledge was still very much present in his own daughter. Roahn did not want to lessen up on these metaphorical taps anytime soon, he realized. She had been hanging on his every word since they had left their ruined house on Rannoch, absorbing each and every meaning with a sage-like composure. Roahn feasted on this new source of context, threatening to drown in the cascade of revelations being heaped upon her. Only now did Shepard realize that she had been bearing this overload of information very stoically, inwardly, as if she had been embarrassed to show weaknesses in front of him.

That part threw him for a bit. Should _Commander Shepard's_ daughter be allowed to falter? Did Roahn realize that failure was not an issue for him? Or was she determined to be better than he was, to rise above his mistakes so that she could find her own purpose and be free of her parents' shadow?

Shepard let the moment linger silently in the air as his fingers curled and tensed, projecting his current mood quite transparently. "I take it that you'd still like for me to treat you as an adult—to continue to explain to you more on who I am—even though you might not agree with what I've done in the past? I'm just warning you again, Roahn, in case you're still harboring second thoughts."

"That's over and done with," Roahn shook her head, Thessia still fresh in her mind. "My answer has been the same since Rannoch. I want everything, dad."

"There's still so much to say. Just… be careful what you wish for."

* * *

Shepard knew that he could not recount the history of Tuchanka well enough to Roahn to do it justice. Wrex was the best person to approach for that sort of information, honestly. What he _was_ confident in was his own perceptions of the world as an outsider and how his experiences had shaped his understanding of how the krogan homeworld was viewed, his own lens becoming sharper and clearer after he had wiped it free of the nebulous smoke that naturally came with his initial ignorance.

The land they treaded upon was rich with memories, many of them clear enough to Shepard that all he had to do was to close his eyes and he would be instantly transported back in time, to when he was tightly clad in his N7 armor, fire and glassy hail raining down upon him in a hellish cocktail, a thick shadow of a Reaper blotting out the sun before him. Already he could feel his palms become damp with sweat as he recalled the explosive heat from a barrage of laser beams bearing down on his position. As he told Roahn about how he had carried himself that day, he made sure to tone everything down so that he did not seem so heroic. Roahn did not deserve to have this warped sense of her father growing up—that film on Thessia had done the both of them no favors, and Shepard had been quite irked at the impeccable image it had presented of himself. This galaxy would not allow him to have any flaws, but by god, he was going to hammer in some cracks in his own image if it was going to be the last thing he would do.

Roahn would speak nary a word as Shepard told her about the Shroud, the metal spire that had been erected by the salarians to circulate the genophage, and how he had planned to use it to dispense the eventual cure to the genophage, as that had been Wrex's lone concession to acquire the support of all the krogan clans against the Reapers during the war. He told her about how the salarian leader—Dalatrass Linron—had tried to tempt him with an offer to sabotage the cure in exchange for the full support of the salarian fleets, fearful at what fresh dangers the cured krogan could potentially bring to the galaxy. Knowing that Roahn would be skeptical of his decision to rebuff such an offer, Shepard felt that he had to devote a lot of time to explain exactly why his decision had been the best one.

Wrex had been a friend to him for years. The krogan people had shown him their worth time after time, proving that they had found the capability to understand why they had been punished and that they knew what they had done wrong so many centuries ago. The dalatrass was an unknown to Shepard. She was conniving, arrogant, and had a shadowy agenda. Not to mention that she was a career politician—a perfect storm of all the qualities that Shepard loathed. He had no loyalty to her and, to be honest, he had been insulted that she had approached him with this offer at all. At the first chance he had gotten, Shepard had told Wrex about the clandestine deal, thereby ridding himself of the anguish he had of possibly keeping such a deal a secret while amplifying Wrex's trust in him. Out of all the heavy choices he had made, Shepard felt that his decision in that moment had been one of the easiest he had ever considered in his life. His principles had been too far solidified for anyone like the dalatrass to even have a hope at budging them. The krogan would be rewarded mightily.

As Shepard had expected, Roahn was slightly surprised when he had mentioned to her that he never bothered to inform the Alliance brass at what the dalatrass had tried to pull on him. As far as command knew, he explained, the talks of their partnership with the salarians had simply broken down. He was never pressured to give a full accounting of what happened, at least not until Raynor Larsen had come along. Shepard had told Wrex the whole story, but the obstinate krogan had a more measured response than he would have figured—Wrex had deemed to let the matter lie and hope that the dalatrass would not stick her nose where it didn't belong a second time. A mature decision and one that Shepard deemed admirable. If the dalatrass had somehow secured a second chance, then it was only right that the krogan receive one as well in the form of their cure.

Roahn had been slightly angered when Shepard revealed that the dalatrass was still in power on the salarian homeworld, Sur'Kesh. Roahn had figured that news of the ill-timed deal would have gotten out eventually, but Shepard maintained that he was the only one, besides Wrex, with the full scope of the devastating arrangement. The knowledge that he had in his head had enough explosive potential to have the dalatrass removed from power, but to Shepard, that was exactly the sort of situation he had been hoping to avoid with the asari. If he stifled his knowledge and let the galaxy move on, he figured, then eventually their misdeeds would be overlooked and everyone would have an equal chance to rebuilt and solidify a stronger future.

It was a bright future that awaited the krogan, and although it had cost them a few friends to get this far, the trek had been worth it. The salarians, much like the asari, had been punished enough. Shepard had to reiterate to Roahn that he had been foolishly confident that no one would ever try to seek him out for his involvement in these matters, a mindset that had been upended when Chimera had burst onto the scene.

Shepard simply hoped that he had conveyed to his daughter that he had secured a better fate for the galaxy by his adamant refusal to reveal the truth. To tell a lie in order to prevent disaster.

All he had to await now if his lie would prove to have halted such a calamity… or would have merely postponed it.

* * *

The two of them had nearly caught up to the group by then, both having to walk fast in order to cover a fair bit of ground. Everyone else had made it to the large temple, the only remaining stronghold that had not been crushed by the toppling Shroud, and it was there that Roahn and Shepard were headed.

But before they entered, Shepard placed his hand on the girl's shoulder, halting themselves just before the door.

"I have something for you," Shepard said as he reached behind his back, his actions slow and arthritic.

Roahn was about to ask what it was but stilled herself, letting her anticipation build, until Shepard finally extended his arm, the Predator pistol lying on its side within his large palm. The girl glanced up from the offered weapon to her father's face and back down to the gun, wary that there was some sort of trickery going on here.

"Go ahead," her father urged as he nudged his arm in her direction.

Roahn did not understand the occasion, but even her caution could be mitigated by her natural impulses. The quarian, her happiness concealed, finally reached out and snagged the Predator by the grip, her hands remarkably tiny as she flexed her fingers upon the handle. Despite the fact that she had been in contact with this weapon for such a short time, Roahn realized that this had been the exact same pistol that her father had snagged from her friend back on Rannoch. He had been carrying it with him all this way.

Finally, Roahn could no longer bear keeping herself in suspense for much longer. "Why are you giving this to me?"

The first time she had even held onto this gun, or had knowingly been in its presence, she had been fighting back tears as her father had raged at her, berating her for improperly respecting the power of such a weapon beyond his watchful eye. This gun had borne witness to an embarrassing moment for her, and Roahn could not help but recollect the moment when her father had been towering over her, red-faced and imposing, as he had nearly shouted her into sobs in the foyer of her home. Her guts gave a painful wrench and she shut her eyes glumly, a prickle encroaching at the back of her jaw.

"It's just something that I've been considering for the past week," Shepard answered. "Also, Wrex has been startlingly good at providing some much-needed advice. In any case, I felt that you've earned the right to hold onto this."

 _He didn't say that I had the right to use it_ , Roahn noted, but she let the semantics slide. Obviously this was going to come with a caveat of sorts, but she was not going to ply for any of those catches. She was not stupid. She was, however, grateful that her father had seemed to have been paying attention to her and had finally decided to reward her for dutifully following his orders.

 _Or…_ the girl thought, _maybe I'm just being a jerk for even thinking that I deserved to be granted this pistol. Maybe I should just be grateful. Dad just wants to help._

Roahn clicked for the weapon to retract itself into its carry mode, and the pistol made a few quick movements before the grip folded upward and the barrel retracted. She then set it against the magnetic holster on her hip. The folded gun looked like an oversized battery pack, skewing her center of gravity to the side.

"Thank…" The words had difficulty coming out. "Thank you."

Shepard narrowed his gaze, sizing Roahn up with that mysterious sort of look he was bound to give every now and then. Roahn had trouble deciphering what that meant and what kind of thoughts were going on in her father's head.

"Prove to me that you can be responsible for this," he merely said before ushering Roahn through the temple doors.

 _I will,_ Roahn solemnly thought, but did not voice it out loud for some reason.

The interior of the temple beyond the gigantic stone doors was something of a marvel, continuing to represent the larger-than-life personalities of all krogan. The building was four stories tall, but each story was catered to the height of a krogan, meaning that Roahn felt like a marmot just standing in the middle of the level that she was on.

The four stories of the temple formed a U-shape over the ground floor. The interior was comprised of the same sand-colored stone that had been cracked and weathered from the elements. Shepard and Roahn had entered on the second floor, which had deposited them upon a balcony that overlooked the base. A few Urdnot guards patrolled on the upper two stories, relatively unconcerned and placid. A four-meter tall statue of an imposing warrior sat smack-dab in the center of the ground floor, a circular base rimming the depiction with skulls and bones of conquered enemies. There was no far wall on the opposite end of the structure. Instead, the entire section was an open-air design, allowing anyone on the lowest level to look out for miles across towards the fertile valley in the distance. From here, Shepard had a clear view of the Urdnot camp as well as the remains of the Shroud as storm clouds churned and spat lightning in the distance.

Roahn bustled down the stairs to get a better look at the magnificent view. Wrex and the others were waiting for them down below.

"Thought we had lost you there for a second," Wrex said in his deep baritone of a voice. "My guards said you had spent a lot of time up on the highway. Hopefully things were all right over there."

"We've made some progress," Shepard explained with a knowing wink to the krogan. "Roahn and I aren't on the same page just yet, but I think we're finally coming to an understanding. One could say that the guidance I received has already started to pay off."

The krogan gave a toothy grin, bouncing almost imperceptibly in uncharacteristically silent laughter. "You can thank me later, Shepard."

"Hey, when you're right, you're right."

Shepard then twitched his head over to the side, a delayed reaction, as he finally caught on what the statue in the middle of the temple was depicting. The human frowned, puzzled for a moment before his face melted into an expression of complete vexation—mouth a thin line, eyebrows heavily lowered.

"Wrex… what the hell is that?"

The krogan obviously knew what Shepard was referring to and could not resist breaking out into another smile of anticipation. "I think that I don't need to say much on that. You like it? Had it installed here just about a year after the war."

Shepard was lost for words as he put a hand to his mouth, simultaneously shaking his head ever so slightly as he appraised the perpetual form the statue had been carefully shaped into.

A thick, white stone. Creamy yet speckled with grains of a glass-like substance. A cross between marble and granite. Any roughened edges had been sheared away by the architect before Tuchanka's notoriously rough weather could have a try at it. The figure stood atop a massive slab, upon which Shepard was able to see a lot clearer, that was rimmed with a variety of skulls from every race imaginable. The base bore no inscription but Shepard did not need any caption to indicate that he was looking at his stone doppelganger.

Whoever had shaped the statue had done a rather good job with the resemblance, Shepard had to concede. His height had been scaled up some, yet that was natural for depictions such as this. The statue portrayed him as clean-shaven, decked out in his bulky yet aerodynamic N7 armor. His hands were shown to clutch an Avenger assault rifle as he gazed confidentially out towards the horizon—in the direction of the bright future ahead.

" _My god_ …" Shepard muttered to himself as he stared into the statue's stone eyes. "What have you done, Wrex?"

Wrex idly glanced at the statue, not at all affected by its presence in the room. "I _did_ say that your name would come to mean 'hero' all over Tuchanka many years ago. We simply figured that we would leave a more lasting impression to give the young ones an idea of who you are."

"Yeah, but what's with the rim of skulls everywhere? Why the morbid imagery?"

"Oh, that was my idea," Wrex admitted. "Krogan like it when their idols are accompanied by their trophies. It gives them credence in their minds, makes them believe that they were successful warriors during their hunt."

So many descriptors regarding Shepard's true opinion of the statue's existence were running through his head so quickly that he was unable to simply pick a few out of thin air. It was like wherever he turned there was always a lingering reminder of his previous occupation: a killer. Now the krogan had gotten in on glorifying his image, perhaps in a tawdry yet earnest portrayal. Standing upon the bones of his enemies, his image struck a magnificent pose, thin cracks seemingly oozing black while the figure's eyes seemed to burn like hot coals. Shepard shuddered, put off by the whole thing.

 _What would Tali say of this? Would she say this is who I truly am?_

How many memorials were going to be constructed of him before everyone would have enough? Could they not just extol their own ability to have survived instead of placing all their admiration upon his tired body? Yet organics did have the tendency to look beyond their own mindset in search of understanding. Placing their trust in others was one of many unique idiosyncrasies that could never be ironed out completely. People needed heroes. They needed deities, beliefs. Something to put their faith in, be it a god or science.

 _Am I god to these people?_ Shepard thought miserably. _How long will it take until religions start popping up in my name?_

"It's not bad," Shepard said haltingly, uneasy, a shaky appraisal of the craftsmanship that had been provided unto the polished rock.

"Look on the bright side," Wrex affectionately jostled Shepard's shoulder. "At least we didn't carve you out riding a thresher maw."

Wrex really could be a smart-ass sometimes, Shepard figured, but it was all in good fun for the krogan. He was actually about to make a snarky remark of his own before his daughter suddenly piped up from near the overhang.

" _Wow!_ " Roahn was leaning over the guardrail in excitement. "That's incredible!"

Wrex glanced over to Shepard, his bright red eyes squinting in mirth. "Sounds like she's noticed another one of our finest architectural feats."

Shepard just squinted his eyes, suspicious of the krogan's mirth.

The krogan then clomped over to where Roahn was lingering upon the overhang. Roahn was rapturously gazing at an enormous dam that had been erected in a thin canyon several miles away. Even from this distance, Roahn was able to spot a thin stream of white water spray down in a tall flume, sending up a cloud of mist near the bottom of the waterfall—the presence of water on Tuchanka at all being a mind-bender for the young girl. The dam itself spanned half a kilometer in length and dredged the entire area of the canyon, a thick and impenetrable stone barrier.

Shepard also slowly drifted over to appraise the sight, once again taking note of the array of dreadnoughts punctuating the waning evening sky. He shoved his hands in his pockets sourly as his ears picked up the faint rumble of sublight engines. Despite being so far away, he had no trouble pinpointing the telltale sound of a warship's engines igniting.

Roahn was more transfixed upon the mechanics of the dam, though. She had her omni-tool open and was shuttering through several images in a harried pace, showing them all to a patient Wrex, who had become the target for her rapturous elation.

"…just like my idea that I presented to my mentors! You've used an arch-gravity dam here—is that to compensate for the amount of water flow or was that a choice used in anticipation of diverting larger water stores to that location? Was the rock stable when you were analyzing where to put the dam? Did you have any concerns that environmental factors might have with the dam's placement? Did—,"

Wrex only chuckled, politely cutting the girl off. "I'm the wrong person to ask on this crap, Roahn. All I do know is that some Alliance engineers," he gestured up at the dreadnoughts hovering overhead off in the distance, "did the bulk of the designs."

"Oh," Roahn looked crestfallen.

"Ah, sorry I can't help you there, kid. But the whole dam has probably been our most important addition to Tuchanka since the war. You see, that dam provides the entire water supply to the Kelphic valley, our most fertile area. With the underground well tapped and under our control, we've been able to focus more of our efforts on rebuilding the surrounding area. The whole valley's been a locus for wayward clans to roost, allowing us to bring them in under our wing."

"Still," Roahn perked her head up. "It's an impressive design. I've never seen one like it in person."

"Yeah, your mother told me a long while back that you had an interest in this sort of stuff. Came up in our calls all the time. Tell me, you still looking to become an architect?"

Ordinarily, Roahn would have considered herself to be someone who would hold their beliefs and dreams steadfastly, allowing little room for spontaneity or sudden shifts in goals. For years she had harbored the desire to work on civil architecture, to manufacture impregnable and fastidiously designed structures meant to provide her people a better life on Rannoch. Hydroelectric dams, solar farms, saline plants—Roahn would have given anything she had owned just to be allowed a glimpse into that life.

But what Roahn did not realize until now was that such a desire had slowly been sapped away from her day after day. A new yearning had taken its place, one that strove to be more ambitious in its nature, to hold a stronger potential that could affect the most change.

It was the fact that her initial plan to work in civil engineering now seemed rather… quaint. It was no longer bold to her, not when she realized that there was a chance for her to enact a more grandiose vision. There were bigger problems out there more onerous than just what her people on Rannoch faced. Issues more demanding, the scale of which was impressive to a degree tenfold above what she experienced on a daily basis. It required a formidable sort to rise above the set limitations, to face more arduous tasks ahead.

And it all stemmed from her father.

There were still problems out there in the galaxy that a hammer and a nail could not hope to fix. How could she possibly sleep at night when a place like Omega, filled with depravity and squalor, continued to exist? Governments were exploiting their own people, corporations were running roughshod over established laws for profit, and decay borne from destruction still continued to exist upon all civilized worlds. Would helping only one world be a better use of her talents, or could she help several? To make a positive difference in the galaxy, to make a big ripple in such a large pond—if she had such an ability to do so, then why not take it?

Roahn's hand aimlessly drifted near the pistol strapped to her hip. Her father had done so much with a mere gun, pointed at the root of all evil. He destroyed his problems by blasting them from all existence, and the galaxy had been saved because of it. He had stopped the Reapers. One man had done the work of a million lifetimes—her father had achieved the impossible.

To live up to that—to strive to do better—was a far more worthy goal. If Roahn felt that she had the panacea for many of the wrongs in this sorry galaxy, then she more than likely had an obligation to do something about it.

Build a dam, stopper a well… or administer a vaccine to the corruption and the plutocrats who fed that infernal growth.

"Perhaps," Roahn finally said. "I don't know. We'll see."

There was a pregnant pause in the air, certainly an affordable time for Roahn to explain herself to Wrex, and her father as well who was standing nearby. The quiet rush in through the open cavern of the temple forced her words back down her throat as she felt a little twinge at the base of her spine, realizing too late that she was being forewarned.

Danger. Here. All around them.

Above them, the sounds of a scuffle became apparent as the krogan guards appeared to be occupied with something up in the rafters. There were soft grunts, sharp but nearly silent slashing noises, and soon one was able to easily pick up the breath of the wind once silence overtook them.

Such a draft felt wrong. On Tuchanka, silence only meant that trouble was about to spring up.

Wrex apparently had the same idea as he wordlessly handed a submachine gun to Shepard, taken from a spare slot upon his back. Shepard quickly checked the weapon to find it filled with thermal clips, ready and awaiting, his hands already going through practiced motions that age could never iron out.

Very soon, the temple gave a wheeze only for the stillness to be split apart with a blast as _something_ dropped down from the top level, a gray blur, and smashed into the ground in front of the statue of Shepard. Hydraulics whirred, servos hissed, and the ground crackled from where the object had impacted into it, fissures erupting into the rock as the floor failed to completely take the weight of the individual that had hurtled down from the heavens.

From out of the cloud of dust, burnt amber eyes blaring fiercely in an array of fiery comets, the Legionnaire stood up from the chalky mist, pristine and daunting, apparently unarmed as he strode towards Shepard and everyone else, who were all congregated near the overhang.

Up on the top level, the Urdnot guards had all vanished, now having been replaced by armored humans, all holding powerful assault rifles whose laser sights cut a path through the murky air, positioned directly on everyone's chest. Wrex, on the other hand, had at least three separate people sighting on him due to his size.

"Roahn," Shepard uttered as he held up his submachine gun at the slowly approaching Legionnaire, " _hide_."

"What about—," the girl started to protest.

"Run, now!" Shepard urged.

Looking around the crowd of her father's friends, Roahn saw from Garrus, Liara, and even Wrex, that all were silently bequeathing her to follow Shepard's orders. A child should not be this close to danger.

Unfathomably torn, Roahn gasped a tiny little cry as she scampered down the closest stairway, her pleading eyes lingering upon the angry and determined stare of her father that bled in the direction of the Legionnaire.

Less than ten meters away from where Shepard stood, yet still did not fire, the Legionnaire finally halted, every one of his optics trained upon the weary human. He appeared to be clutching something in his hand, and it was only when the cyborg raised his arm did Shepard realize that the Legionnaire was holding the severed head of one of the Urdnot guards. Fresh blood dripped from the cut neck, quickly splattering a puddle at the Legionnaire's feet. The wound appeared to have been finely cut, with a laser scalpel, and the krogan's eyes had rolled all the way up into his head. Wordlessly, the cyborg dropped his arm and tossed the head in Shepard's direction with a horrid plopping noise. The head spat blood in all directions as it rolled, stopping just short of Shepard's feet.

"I see that your strategy, when confronted with your mortality, was to flee to the refuge that your allies could presumably provide," the Legionnaire hissed, the binary tones of his voice grinding against each other in a hellish cacophony before appraising every member of the group in turn. "You've amassed old faces since we've last met. Did you think that they would be an adequate deterrent for me? Should I be flattered?"

"Shepard," Wrex rumbled as he brought out a Claymore shotgun, "is this the fool you had warned me about yesterday? The one who's been chasing you?"

Recalling the terror of having the cyborg burst through the front doors of his house, solid matter barely acting as an interruption to the behemoth, Shepard gave an involuntary shudder. "Yes, it is."

"Urdnot Wrex," the Legionnaire said in a self-satisfied voice, "your participation will only be a distraction to me. I've waited too long to be hampered from any outside interference this time—there is no point in trying to protect your friend. Walk away and be spared."

"You might be disappointed!" Garrus growled as he stepped into the fray, his rifle at the ready. Liara joined alongside the turian, her head tilted behind the sights of her own weapon, body rippling with biotic energy.

The Legionnaire just appraised the group as casually as one might consult what food to pick from a buffet while weapons clicked in readiness all around him. "The legendary team, brought back together. You should all be assuaged to learn that I am not here to harm Shepard at all. Having him dead is not my objective. On the other hand, I must point out that if you _do_ decide to step in to protect your friend, I might not be so lenient. I might even get carried away."

"You won't even touch him!" Liara snarled, her brow furrowing in anger.

Next to all of them, Shepard wanted to voice his profound thanks to his dear friends. Even after all this time, they still showed him such devout loyalty, such staunch affection and love that they could not even comprehend, even for a nanosecond, abandoning him to this thing. His mouth had run dry due to anticipation, however, and Shepard's finger nervously quaked as he lightly positioned it upon the trigger. He had seen the Legionnaire in action and he knew what the cyborg was capable of. He had nearly been torn apart the last time and the Legionnaire had not even been armed at that time!

Did everyone truly understand the danger inherent right now?

"I'm not surrendering to you," Shepard found enough strength to snarl, confidence overriding his nerves. "Larsen and Chimera won't have me willingly."

In amusement, the Legionnaire tilted his head by a fraction of a degree. "You know I don't need you to be willing, _Commander_."

"Enough talk!" Wrex bellowed as he racked the slide of his gun. "I say let's kill this idiot and be done with it."

The Legionnaire subtly wilted, as if he had been expecting this line of dialogue to have generated a beneficial outcome in the very end, no matter how hopeless the outlook had been. In fact, the cyborg almost seemed to be disappointed.

"So be it," came the metallic beast's cold reply.

Quick as a flash, the Legionnaire hunched down into a striking position while a variety of flaps sprung open upon his shoulders. There was a harsh whining sound, reminiscent of an engine spooling up, and suddenly twin blasts of flame erupted from the Legionnaire's back—two rocket boosters propelling him across the ground faster than anyone could react. There was the acrid tang of rocket fuel in the air. Smoke funneled across the ground.

Wrex was quick on the draw, but the Legionnaire was faster. The cyborg had reached Wrex's position, easily ducked the shotgun blast that seemed to split the air in half, and whirled in a strike that knocked the shotgun clean out of the krogan's hands. Before Wrex could counter, the Legionnaire roughly grabbed at the collar of Wrex's armor, slugged the krogan once in the face—breaking Wrex's nose and causing a spurt of blood to gush down his front—and brought his head to within an inch of the krogan's face.

"Have fun," the Legionnaire whispered.

The cyborg then abruptly pivoted, thick heels pounding and squealing upon worn stones, as he gripped Wrex's armor, now lifting the krogan up from the ground. Hydraulics wrenched and vibrated torturously in the Legionnaire's arms, but the cyborg was able to pick up two tons of krogan quite handedly. Wrex, bleeding profusely from his nose, had no idea what was going on, for he had been so stunned at the Legionnaire's brazen attack. The Legionnaire then gave a punishing wrench and swung his arms in a wide throw that hurtled Wrex into the air. The krogan flew upwards, clearing several stories until his arc finally catapulted him upon the third floor with a crash, a mushroom cloud of dust lazily puffing over the balcony as Wrex sailed out of sight.

Shepard had been staring at the display with a stupid expression—he had assumed that Wrex would have been able to mount a decent defense against the Legionnaire, but he had been dealt with careless abandon. Fear pooled in his belly, spiking upward towards his chest in a black mass.

A wordless roar punctuated his lips as he finally held the trigger of the submachine gun down. Bullets lazily pinged off of the Legionnaire's armor, throwing up microsecond displays of sparks. The Legionnaire slowly turned around to face Shepard, almost as if he was oblivious to the fact that he was being shot. The shields and armor draping around him were holding strong enough to contain the brunt of the assault. Certainly he regarded Shepard with an air of amusement, like the gun the human was holding in his hands was nothing more than a toy throwing up a veneer of noise and light. Flickers of impacts spattered across the face of the cyborg, illuminating him with frightful flashes.

The jerking of the gun in Shepard's hands jolted up his arms, his muscles scrambling to contain the bite of the recoil. This was all real. The panic, the sounds, the anger. But the Legionnaire was shrugging it off like he existed in a dream-like dimension, unable to be harmed from his pitiful attacks.

The Legionnaire growled, his shields singing as Garrus and Liara joined in the fray by peppering him with sustained fire. The cyborg bounded behind a stone pillar, his hands still weaponless, giving his shields some time to recharge.

Liara sidestepped, eyes dead set ahead, as she prepared to flank the column. She maneuvered behind another pillar after ejecting her thermal clip. Garrus and Shepard both reloaded too, the twin clangs of their ejected clips clinking delicately upon the ground.

But the Legionnaire had heard the tell-tale signs of the three reloading their weapons at the same time. Bursting out from behind the column in a frenzied rush, there was that spooling up sound again, and the Legionnaire was suddenly propelled right in the direction where Shepard was standing, his own submachine gun off-center as he worked to get it in line.

It was too late, as the Legionnaire skidded to a stop just a foot from Shepard's reach. "You'll be dealt with in due time," the cyborg uttered as he swiped a hand forth, a thin smear of gray coloration that scraped across the breadth of Shepard's vision. Shepard felt something clip the side of his head, a glancing blow, and the world unexpectedly turned the wrong way up. He was knocked backward, tumbling down a series of steps to a sublevel of the temple, a fresh cut on his forehead bubbling hot blood that trickled down his dirtied skin.

The Legionnaire watched Shepard plummet down the stairs but did not pursue. Instead, he directed his attention to the other two individuals in the room who were still continuing to level a fair amount of fire his way.

Garrus raised his assault rifle slightly as he yanked upon his secondary trigger. A slow moving projectile shot out of the under-barrel with a puff, scything through the air as it left a thin streak behind. The Legionnaire did not move to avoid it and simply let the concussive projectile hit him square in the middle of his chest. The projectile impacted with a _bang_ but the Legionnaire was still standing in the aftermath. Soundless, the enormous cyborg had simply been forced back a few feet, his heels leaving white gouges in the ground as he had bent his knees to take the full brunt of the kinetic energy. With a clanking noise, the cyborg's knees unlocked and he straightened back up, electronic warbles rumbling through his vocabulator. Cantankerously, the Legionnaire plodded forward once more.

His eyes wide behind his visor, Garrus ceased fire for a crucial moment before regaining his wits again. He thumbed a control on his omni-tool and the Legionnaire was suddenly lit alight as an electronic pulse zapped into him, momentarily stunned from the overload burst. Electricity fizzled and briefly arced away, wrapping around the cyborg in a harsh embrace of deadly energy. Garrus tasted ozone on his tongue. His nose wrinkled.

But the Legionnaire was not one to be overcome so easily. The burst eventually trickled away, leaving him with full functionality again. His armor did not appear to have been scuffed nor did his chassis seem discombobulated from the burst. Garrus then realized that the overload blast had merely affected a sizable chunk of the Legionnaire's shields and not any of his physical functionalities, harmlessly warping away at the invisible surface while leaving no lasting damage to his actual enemy.

The Legionnaire growled, his optics slanting dangerously as he was becoming a little annoyed with these constant interruptions. It was time to switch things up a bit.

In two powerful strides, the Legionnaire had made it to Garrus' position whereupon he roughly shunted out a hand, his alloy palm impacting firmly upon Garrus' chestplate, cracking a few ribs instantaneously. Garrus was shot in a straight line across the ground until his back finally collided with a firm pillar responsible for holding up the heavy ceiling. With the wind knocked out of him, he crumpled.

That just left Liara as the last person standing in the room, and even though Garrus was now out of commission for the time being, she did not let her panic clearly show upon her face. Being slightly longer lived than most species, and given her experience with the mantle of the Shadow Broker, Liara had already mastered the art of concealing her expression in the face of such horrific danger.

Yet such training was useless when said enemy had no facial expressions of their own to counter.

After Liara's pistol coughed a few times, producing no effect, she finally stowed it with a scowl. So, if conventional weapons were not going to do the trick here, perhaps it was time to move on to more unconventional means.

Liara closed her eyes, deepened her mind, and calmly drew from the well of limitless energy that infested her cells, absorbing the dark power that leeched from the nucleus of her own being as she swirled the force into a rotund ball between her fingers. Thick tendrils of biotic energy blazed from her fingertips and an aura of throbbing invisible energy pulsed in the palms of her hands. She spread out her arms and flowed her stance into an effortful push, creating a singularity of hunger between her and the Legionnaire.

The rip in space-time tore the dust from the walls, levitating pebbles and stones in its wake. The Legionnaire was close enough to the black hole that had been composed of intense mass effect fields to be influenced by the gravitational chaos in its wake, but claw-like spikes burst from his feet, anchoring the cyborg to the ground while the singularity feasted upon all matter. Liara began to sweat as she held the hole open, her muscles already starting to burn as she concentrated her mind to this task. But no matter how much Liara persisted, the Legionnaire was unaffected by the influence of the singularity. The cyborg held his ground, still bolted onto the stone floor, as he patiently waited for Liara's energy to be sapped as she futilely continued to hold the singularity open.

With a final gasp, Liara dropped her arms and the singularity collapsed on itself with a fierce crackle. There was a springing noise and the claws on the Legionnaire's feet retracted back into his legs, allowing him to continue stalking forward.

"You won't take another step forward!" Liara roared as she clenched a fist, pulling more strength from the power that fueled her body, causing her entire limb to glow a brilliant shade of white-hot purple as the energy of the universe gathered around her skin. She then unclenched her fist, and at the same time a furious field of pure white segmented light blanketed the Legionnaire, completely dousing him in a stasis field.

The Legionnaire briefly halted, his body microscopically jerking in protest as the field inhibited his movements. Liara strained from both the force of holding the field and from the sheer power the Legionnaire was flexing in his attempt to escape. Liara's lungs shriveled as the breath left her. Something ruptured in her head, causing blood to pour out of a nostril. She wheezed, gray spots dotting her vision. It was hopeless—she had not allowed herself enough time to recover after creating that singularity. Her energy reserves had been sapped. The stasis field was failing—already she could see it straining against the outline of the cyborg trapped beneath the vibrant display, sparking and hissing.

Then a cruel voice reached her ears, insanely able to pierce the haunting glow.

"You don't have a choice."

The Legionnaire burst free from the field with a roar of victory. The stasis barrier shattered to the sound of breaking glass, the force rippling out from the epicenter in a wave of pressure, sweeping Liara completely off her feet with a cry. She had not been strong enough to hold a man of metal and sheer will. His rage and power had far outmatched hers at every turn.

Still flung from the detonation, Liara's head swam as her brain fought to make heads or tails of her orientation. However, her head met something hard and then everything momentarily turned black.

Liara's foe, after seeing her collapse into unconsciousness, did not revel in his victory. He instead turned on a heel, the opposition pacified, as he made his way towards where he had flung his quarry down a steep set of steps. Only when he finally reached the staircase, the Legionnaire discovered that the space down below was empty. No body lay at the foot of the stairs.

A light blinked near the Legionnaire's visor and a noise reminiscent of a construction siren automatically escaped him. No matter. Shepard surely could not have gotten very far. Also, with his friends in danger, would he really be so callous to leave them like this?

"Now…" the Legionnaire purred in anticipation. "Where did you go, Shepard?"

* * *

Just a few levels above, Wrex shook his head, dumbfounded at his predicament, rubble coursing off of him like water. One moment he had been squaring up against the most monstrous humanoid he had ever seen, the next he had been weightless through the air, traveling upward at a speed unknowable to most krogan. He had impacted against a nearby wall heavily, but that had not hurt much. He did not even think that he was bleeding, aside from his nose, which the impact of a quite heavy fist had apparently ruptured something.

But was he mad. A blazing anger that so naturally came to him, filling his breath with fire and coursing through his veins like a pleasure drug. Oh, the indignity of being thrown like a sack of meat! That bastard Legionnaire would rue the day he laid hands on Urdnot Wrex! No one threw a krogan and lived to tell the tale!

That would have to wait, for Wrex was soon aware that a squad of Chimera troopers were bearing down on him, rifles at the ready. They did not fire yet, because most humans had learned by that point that bullets just tend to make krogans mad when not in sync with each other. Wrex groaned as he rolled himself onto his stomach, pushing himself up with his fists.

"On my command," the lead Chimera mercenary growled, his voice scratchy through his mouthpiece, "we perforate him. Three… two…"

" _One!_ " Wrex finished as he lashed out with an arm, a biotic wave sweeping out from the gesture and catching three Chimera mercs across the chest. Two of them were launched over the side of the guardrail to plummet three stories down. The third was propelled so hard and so far that he had been launched directly into a statue of a krogan wielding a sword near the far wall. The unlucky solider slammed into the statue, the stone point of the sword impaling the man in the back of the neck and out the front of the jaw, cracking his face in half and sending a mutilated mass of shattered bone and torn sinew gushing to the ground. The man gurgled once as he hung upon the sword, gave a single jerk, and abruptly died, his entire torso slick with blood.

The rest of the Chimera troopers on the floor looked at Wrex's handiwork and then back to Wrex, now understandably weary at the thought of engaging a warlord like him in open combat.

Wrex had no time to gawk, for his plates were itching for a fight, every single nerve wired red-hot in his body. His strength returned, he leaped to his feet and lunged over to where another statue of a famous krogan warrior held an actual battle-hammer—an extremely dense and sharpened stone, nigh un-crackable, that had been sculpted to fit a thick staff able to heft its weight. Wrex gave a yank and the statue offered the hammer to him easily, the bust's arms crumbling away from the rude force.

With a laugh, Wrex charged into the mass of troopers and gave a wild swing with the hammer as he embarked upon his savage melee. The first strike caught a human upon his side, carrying him across the ground, only for the man to impact into a wall. The force from the hammer then met the wall a split-second later, cutting the human in half and liquefying his insides. Wrex twirled the gore-stained hammer as erratic bursts of fire cut stark paths in his direction, his skin stinging as hot pellets sliced at his skin.

The pain was good. It merely served to fuel his anger.

Still roaring with laughter, Wrex leaped forward to embroil himself once more into carnage. He became a whirling dervish with the hammer; one swing took a man's head off, another blow shattered every bone in a trooper's leg, all the while screams and pathetic coughs filled Wrex's ears.

Wading into glory, Wrex could only grin as he hefted the hammer for another blow.

 _This was fun!_

* * *

Meanwhile, Roahn curled into a fetal position, the booms from upstairs easily making their way down to where she was hiding. Streams of dust trickled down from the ceiling. The stone hallways seemed to shift. Sharp crackles echoed in her mind. Panic rose within her.

She had dutifully obeyed her father's order to run away, but she had become so hopelessly lost after turning corner after corner that felt she had gained no ground at all. At the first shadowy corner she ran into, Roahn wasted no time in stuffing herself where the shadows were thickest, hoping that she would become invisible, to disappear into thin air as the chaos from above continued to reign.

Too long. The sounds of battle had been going on for too long. Roahn groaned to herself, a self-serving cry of despair meant to echo her frustrations, her fears. Her father… was he all right? Was Garrus? Liara? Wrex? The very thought of the Legionnaire doing her heroes harm was unfathomable, but deep down she knew it was possible. Based on the terror that had laced her father's voice when he had told her to run, Roahn knew that the Legionnaire was no ordinary enemy. This was a force that could kill on command, break through every barrier.

And Roahn had left everyone there to deal with it.

Angrily, she shunted a fist into the wall, only to cry out when pain flared in her knuckles. Who knew punching rock would be a wasted effort? Roahn tried not to let any tears spill forth, frightened beyond belief as she raised her hands to grasp her helmeted head, her fingers briefly brushing the pistol strapped to her side.

 _The pistol…_

It was not the weapon that spurred her mind so, but it gave way to a new train of thought that send her down on a roller coaster of congruent ideas. Did she not decide that she had wanted to make a positive difference in the galaxy just earlier today? Well, she might not be the most accurate shot with a gun, nor did she have a hope of providing any assistance with such a weapon, but maybe there was another route for her to take. Something that played to her strengths a bit better.

Fumbling fingers opened her omni-tool, and her glowing eyes shot back and forth as she realized that the orange glow now lit up the black corner she had wedged herself into, but she had to sacrifice something to get this done. Roahn opened up her applications to find what she was looking for. Her geologic survey rider! Her academy project! She had a bunch of blueprints that were mostly prototypical and academic at best, but there were still some functions that were shared with her omni-tool already.

A multi-spectrum scanning tool, for instance.

A radar-like dish icon then booted up upon her tool, emitting a flat circle in a projected radius of little more than a dozen meters. Her fingers then set the filter to detect localized electrical pulses, namely those that were densely grouped upon one figure. Her radar came back with a singular ping—a lone red dot on the display.

 _That must be the Legionnaire!_ Roahn realized. Her scanner had isolated him from everyone else. Now, if she remembered her studies correctly, high-concept technologies and electronics were more susceptible to high-frequency wavelengths in order to prevent malfunctions. The Legionnaire would be hardened against such wavelengths, obviously, but if she initiated a concentrated band of waves of lower energy and a longer wavelength like… say… microwaves all congregated into one area, she could perpetuate a large scale of energy traffic that could potentially interfere with the Legionnaire's systems, like a DDoS attack!

Roahn pummeled the button to begin the transmission, but to her chagrin, her omni-tool was telling her that she did not have the range to keep up a steady attack stream. The stone walls here were also a problem, her microwaves were having trouble penetrating them and reaching up to the next floor.

" _Bosh'tet!_ " Roahn cursed as she clambered to her feet. She was going to have to get closer.

* * *

Something was wrong.

The Legionnaire felt it before his systems diagnostics could detect that something was amiss. It started with a tiny little flicker on his HUD before several attributes lining his vision abruptly darkened. Targeting, data streams, visualization programs began to reboot all at once. This was certainly unexpected.

A recorded snarl emitted from his vocabulator in reflex as the Legionnaire gave his dome a tap. Slowly, his display was returning to normal, but this was a glitch he could not afford to have right now. At the very least, this meant that the techs back at Chimera HQ were going to have to take a look at him once this was all said and done—and the Legionnaire did not like the threat of such a prospect one bit.

Now… back to the matter at hand.

Just then, a smoke grenade rolled at the Legionnaire's feet, lightly nudging at the polished metal boots. The cyborg glanced downward idly only for it to detonate in his face, obscuring the area with a heavy, noxious fog. The Legionnaire's air intakes automatically filtered out particulates for him to breathe, so there was no coughing reaction involved here. The cyborg slowly rotated in place, using his advanced optics to peer through the fog, taking note that, aside from the hissing grenade, the area had become unusually quiet.

"You can't hide forever, Shepard," he taunted, his voice sounding like he would be gnashing his teeth if he had any. "Nor can you sneak up on me. We both were born from fire and combat, but I was _built_ for it. If you think that you're able to get the upper hand, you are mistaken!"

To prove his point, the Legionnaire spun around just in time to catch Shepard stepping out from behind a column, already unleashing a concussive burst towards the cyborg. The Legionnaire sidestepped the projectile, keeping his head fixed in Shepard's direction, swiveling only when he had to wrench his body to the side.

"Sloppy of you, _Commander_."

Weathered from fear and rage, Shepard's face relaxed into an intense stare of determination as he held the trigger down on full, his submachine gun barking as it unleashed a hail of fire that exploded from the short barrel. The Legionnaire jolted as some of the shots slammed into his frame—he then realized that Shepard was using armor-piercing rounds, which were much more effective at keeping him pacified compared to what anyone else had been doing. Withstanding so much fire would eventually take a toll, which is why the Legionnaire decided to ramp up the speed of his attacks, no longer keen on taking things at a laborious pace.

Darting from cover to cover, the Legionnaire ran ahead of the spread that Shepard was able to lay down with his gun. Shepard was a fantastic shot, but his reflexes, enhanced or not, were no match for the cold calculation of machinery. The Legionnaire leaped and jumped from column to column, bullets leaving chunks in the pillars behind him as he traversed the open space of the temple. Upon nearing Shepard's position, the Legionnaire dropped from the sky, a hand ripping at the stone tower to slow his descent, sending chunks of razor-sharp rock flying.

Shepard moved out of the way just in time before the Legionnaire landed right where he had been standing. There was no time left, however, for him to retaliate because the evasive maneuvers had clumsily knocked off his aim. The Legionnaire then reached out and encountered little resistance in ripping the gun from Shepard's hands. The cyborg flexed the weapon in his hands and easily cracked it in two, spraying metallic innards, shards of polymer, and a slew of thermal clips across the floor.

While the Legionnaire busied himself with tossing the two halves of the ruined submachine gun to the side, Shepard shuffled his feet and scampered over behind a stone bench, his eyes fruitlessly scanning for a weapon to defend himself with. His escape routes were blocked by the mechanoid—there was nowhere to run without rushing headlong into the cyborg's arms. Any attempts to formulate a plan fizzled out in moments within his head, the strands of thought unwilling to be connected.

The manlike reproduction stopped just a few meters short of Shepard's cover, all geared up in preparation to strike, yet the Legionnaire held back.

"You haven't been as deferential as I had hoped, Shepard," the Legionnaire taunted. "Your rashness is only jeopardizing the lives of others not in our immediate proximity."

That claim sounded ludicrous to Shepard and he nearly poked his head out from behind the stone bench in confusion. "How the hell do you figure that?!"

"Simple," the Legionnaire hissed as he made a gesture in the air, booting up an image upon his omni-tool and blasting its size up so that Shepard could see. "I've been holding a trump card all this time."

Now Shepard leaned out of cover to ascertain what the Legionnaire was referring to. Upon the viewscreen, he was able to observe a singular item located in a dim room. Static occasionally warped the image but Shepard had a good interpretation of the item being shown—a rotund item, a little less than a meter in diameter, with a few red blinking diodes upon the top hemisphere. A stand kept the object up, preventing it from rolling away as an unreadable timer impassively clicked down.

Shepard's blood ran cold. He had been exposed to far too many of these items to treat them with disdain. The feed that the Legionnaire would not be a simple recording, but live. This was not a joke, no trickery involved here. He could not make out the immediate surroundings of the bulbous object, but Shepard intrinsically knew that he, along with everyone else, could be in the most terrible sort of danger ever imagined.

"You have a _nuke?_ " Shepard uttered in horror. "Where?"

"Oh, somewhere out there," the Legionnaire rasped as he let loose a cruel laugh to accompany his confidence. The cyborg made a sweeping gesture out towards the open air behind Shepard, a broad signal that stretched out towards the horizon. "The only question is… _where_ , exactly?"

Against his better judgment, Shepard craned his head over to look out towards the stretch of canyons far below. The Legionnaire simply stood by, patiently waiting for Shepard to come to a conclusion on his own terms. From what Shepard could see, and from what he was able to frantically determine, was that there could be an innumerable amount of places where the Legionnaire would have planted such a device. A nuclear bomb—what madness was Chimera planning? All of Shepard's body seemed to ache wearily. His eyelids drooped from fatigue.

A broad stretch of the krogan border was all within sight of Shepard's position. He gazed to and fro, ignoring the collection of Alliance dreadnoughts dotting the sky, as he thought battle strategy. Where to place a nuke? What was Chimera's objective? Maximum casualties? Resource denial? As far as he could tell, the only viable target in his line of sight was that dam down below—blowing it up would not only take away a much-needed source of energy, but would also flood the heavily populated valley that it served. Thousands of krogans would die—men, women, and children. Yes… the dam was the likely target.

"You… _animal_ ," Shepard mustered, infuriated at his impotence. "You would kill thousands just to get to me?"

"I'd kill as many as it would take to get the mission done," the Legionnaire retorted. "Tactical deployment, low radius nuclear device. The blast zone won't take us, but it might bode badly for others. I told you before that you were the only thing standing in my way. I will finally fulfill my destiny once I take care of you."

"How did you even get the nuke? Chimera's not supposed to be a nuclear power!"

"Spoils of war from STG. They were the first to illegally take possession of the nuke to begin with. You could say that I took it off their hands. Saved them the trouble of having to cover their actions up."

The Legionnaire then shut off the feed of his omni-tool and proceeded to lift his left arm, his thumb making a clicking sound as a pulsating haptic button began to strobe upon his palm.

"We've talked long enough, Shepard," the Legionnaire said as his thumb tauntingly inched closer to the button, which Shepard presumed was the detonator. "Surrender yourself and we can avoid any potential messiness from occurring."

A bevy of options ran the gamut in Shepard's head, overtaking one another in their bid for permanence. Give up and save many lives, or keep on fighting while sacrificing innocent people in the process… not to mention that victory in his case seemed lightyears away. Still, Shepard was nearly about to metaphorically spit in the Legionnaire's face by telling him to go fuck himself when a battle cry from the far end of the room interrupted him.

" _YAAAARRRGGHH!_ " Wrex roared as he vaulted over the railing of the third story, a purple outline wrapping around him—a biotic field—that slowed his velocity so that he could land on the ground safely. The krogan hefted the war hammer in his hands as he gnashed his teeth, red eyes rimmed with the lust for blood. "You think you can threaten my people? Threaten Shepard? You're _dead_ , pyjak!"

Bellowing, Wrex ducked his head in a fierce charge and practically leaped all the way across to where the Legionnaire was standing. The cyborg had been so absorbed with Shepard that he had initially paid the krogan no mind, but it was not until the ground started to quake from the onrushing Wrex did the Legionnaire partially rotate his body, irritable at the interference.

This time, the Legionnaire was the one who was too slow. Wrex had already swung the hammer down in a massive strike, the edge of the substantial stone creating a whistling noise through the air right before it smashed down onto the Legionnaire's wrist. Armor cracked, wires sparked, and a few of the cyborg's fingers were smashed out of alignment while the hammer finished its strike by embedding itself into the ground, creating a miniature shockwave in the process.

The Legionnaire briefly looked down at his maimed hand, his omni-tool now shorting out along his forearm. The armor was scratched and gouged, several of the components were exposed, and the barest amount of functionality remained in the limb.

Wrex was not finished, as hundreds of pounds of muscle all flexed in his massive arms, and he twisted his body to yank the hammer from the ground, gentle trails of dust trickling off the head as it lifted up, and whirled in a fearsome sideways blow that seemed to part the very air entirely. The krogan's mouth was open—completely soundless—as the hammer screamed on target towards the Legionnaire's head.

 _CRAAACK!_

More armor bits flew and the Legionnaire staggered a few steps, electronic-sounding feedback escaping in a fearsome warble. The cyborg immediately clasped his working hand to where the hammer had struck his head, his breathing now coming in faint rasps. Shepard could see that the right side of the Legionnaire's metal skull had been crumpled inward slightly, several of the panels now being bent out of alignment. All the oculi on that side had either darkened or had been shattered outright. The armor there was scuffed, and a few errant sparks dripped out from the dark gaps. The faceplate of the Legionnaire had also been badly warped—Shepard could now get a cleaner view into the bloody bone-like structure that lingered beyond the metal partition. A disgusting marriage of organic and synthetic that slowly wept blood.

The Legionnaire coughed as he stumbled away from Wrex, his remaining eyes all trained upon the krogan. Ruffling himself up, much like a bird of paradise, the cyborg straightened, growling continuously like a fearsome beast that had been backed into a corner.

And a cornered beast was more dangerous than one out in the open.

"Oh… you fool," the Legionnaire rumbled in laughter, his voice even more distorted now that his synthesizer had been ruined. All that came out was the treble timbre, making the Legionnaire's voice seem like a horrid and light whisper. "Did you _really_ think that my omni-tool in my arm was the key to the detonator? You could never have stopped this, anyway."

In a cruel demonstration of just how unfair this galaxy was, the Legionnaire gave a twitch of his head, a brief radio broadcast emitting from an antenna within his body.

Shepard froze, a sigh barely escaping his lips.

Then the sky turned ruby.

Sound seemed to escape the air, like a vacuum had sucked all of the noise out from Tuchanka itself. Shepard had to turn away as the light of a billion candles flared at his back, deepening the sky to a crimson color. It was as if the very atmosphere was dripping blood. For a fraction of a second, Shepard felt heat flare at his exposed skin and he dropped down to the ground, covering his head as he did so.

Yet… something was amiss. The warmth from the blast was too cold. Colder than he expected. The light had been blinding, but not completely debilitating. And Shepard had still not heard the actual explosion itself. From the distance to the dam, Shepard should have heard it at least ten seconds after the actual detonation.

Bewildered and disorganized, Shepard straightened up from where he had collapsed upon the ground, despite recalling in his training to never get up in the event of a nuclear strike. Dread encroaching upon his bones, he turned in place to get a better view, only to gape in astonishment at the sight.

The dam was still intact. It had not disappeared underneath a veil of smoke, dust, and fire. It had never been the target at all. Instead, a lick of orange flame off in the distance caught Shepard's eye and he leaned over the guardrail, half his body hanging in open air as his jaw dropped. Something was falling out of the sky. One… no, two… no, five ships were tumbling to the ground several miles away. The cloud cover between Shepard and the far away ships had all been evaporated from the blast, allowing him to view everything in clear, pristine air. But those ships… who did they belong to?

It was only when the shadowy outlines of the vessels fell across the path of the sun did Shepard feel bile rise up in his stomach. Those were the Alliance dreadnoughts that had been blown out of the sky, crumpled to pieces from the nuclear explosion. Hundreds of crewmen and women, all gone down with their respective ships. Chimera had just bombed the Alliance. Shepard could only stare, helpless, as the warships smashed into the rocky earth of Tuchanka, secondary explosions rimming the horizon as more and more of the frigates joined their brethren in death.

"Monster…" Shepard wheezed as he turned around, his body movements slow and murky like he had been submerged in gelatin. "You _motherfuck_ —"

It had been an indelicate decision when the chemicals in Shepard's brain had set upon him the desire to face the Legionnaire in open combat—without a weapon—but logic gave way to instinct as the mushroom cloud of the explosion started to furrow upwards behind him. Shepard whirled just in time for a bevy of armored Chimera troopers to collide at full speed with him, forcing his back to bend at an awkward angle against the railing. Heavy gauntlets forced themselves at his arms and soon Shepard felt the bite of omni-cuffs eat into his wrists. He jerked in the grip of the troopers, but his strength had finally been sapped—he could no longer mount an effective resistance. That did not matter much to the mercs, as one of them was getting fed up with Shepard's struggling that he reared his fist back and punched the hardened veteran in the jaw. Shepard felt his mouth fill up with blood. He tasted iron.

"No, no," he heard the Legionnaire call out. The troopers eased off a little but still kept their grip on Shepard. "He's not to be badly damaged. We can't have any evidence of physical coercion."

The mercs then rudely deposited Shepard onto the ground, where he could only roll about like a pathetic worm.

"You bastard," Shepard gritted after spitting out a mouthful of blood, a single strand dribbling down his chin and staining his beard. "You tricked me."

The Legionnaire just placidly stared back. "You made an incorrect assumption, Shepard. That is something that I cannot be held accountable for."

Past a swirling mass of smoke and dust, Shepard's eyes twitched over in the direction of a shadow that had parted the clouds as they limped towards the Legionnaire. Wrex, bloodstained and angry, hefted the enormous war hammer in preparation for one, final blow.

But the Legionnaire had detected that Shepard's eyes had focused onto something entirely, and spun so quickly he could have been a top, locking murderous gazes with Wrex just before he could lay into his foe. The Legionnaire's good arm shot upwards and knocked the hammer out of Wrex's grip, sending it crashing to the floor. Wrex, now with no weight to counterbalance, stumbled forward, momentarily caught off guard. The Legionnaire used this opportunity to call out the anodized blade housed within his wrist. With a _shink_ , the blade slid into view, dying sunlight melting across its polished face. Almost carelessly, the cyborg swiped upward, the point of the razor searing mercilessly towards Wrex's face.

There was an explosion of blood and Wrex howled. Somewhere off in the distance, Shepard could have sworn he heard the echo of a scream.

Wrex backed away, yowling, as orange ichor profusely dripped from his face. The krogan momentarily lifted his hands away for Shepard to see that the Legionnaire's blade had scraped across Wrex's right eye, putting it out. That eye was a black pit now, oozing and useless. Wrex sank to a knee, surprised at the amount of pain that could have come from such a quick wound.

"No!" Shepard roared as he called his second wind into play. Leaping to his feet, he was able to knock away the Chimera thugs holding him back while his cuffed hands grabbed at a Paladin pistol holstered upon one of their waistbands.

Shepard leapt forward, eager to unload the entire clip into the Legionnaire's head, but the fearsome mechanoid lunged across and backhanded Shepard hard across the jaw, sending him flying and rolling to a stop at the base of the statue of himself. Solemn stone eyes stared into Shepard's blue ones. His posture, forever embedded in rock, etched a contrasting picture of the man collapsed before it. Shepard's strength waned, his body refusing to move.

Taunts of failure filled Shepard's head as he groaned, dazed. Cruel laughter lingered as his disappointment in himself festered within his soul.

Meanwhile, Wrex was stumbling to his feet again, eager to engage the Legionnaire again, but the cyborg had long noticed the danger rising within the krogan, which was why he had unlatched the automatic shotgun that had been hanging upon his back the entire time, the heat bleed-off system already connected to his chassis.

The Legionnaire pointed the gun at the krogan.

Shepard gagged, his chest hurting too much, preventing him from screaming.

"Enough of this," the Legionnaire spat and he fired once into Wrex. More orange blood erupted and blossomed across Shepard's vision. Wrex's left arm, blasted off at the elbow, crumpled to the ground. The krogan gave a final bellow, the stump of his arm dribbling freely, before collapsing into the pool of his own blood. Shepard tried to cry out again, but his terrible wince at seeing his friend so grievously maimed stole the energy out of his lungs that enabled him to speak.

Standing atop the writhing krogan, the Legionnaire bent down to address the fallen Wrex. "Don't get back up. You are not the one who will end up killing me. That right is apparently not reserved for you."

His head clearing, Shepard found the strength to sit back up but not before more Chimera soldiers came out of the woodwork to push him back down again, slamming his back repeatedly against the ground before they grabbed him underneath his arms to raise him on shaky feet.

Shepard continued to grapple against his captors, but the Legionnaire snapped his metal fingers together as he stalked away from the one-armed, partially blinded Wrex. "Stop your struggling, Shepard, or I might have to get a little more creative if you don't."

"Go to hell!"

"Your prolix vocabulary leaves much to be desired. Fortunately, I've learned a long time ago that actions speak louder than words."

Additional Chimera troopers marched out of a side hallway.

With a smaller figured clutched between them.

" _Dad!_ " Roahn cried out as she struggled to free herself in the grip of the two soldiers, nearly sobbing as the firm clenching of the men bit into her wrists.

"Roahn…" Shepard rasped, all the fight leaving his bones, surrendering himself unconsciously in an instant.

The Legionnaire glanced proudly between Shepard and his daughter, the fingers of his still-working right arm twitching in anticipation.

"There are many ways to break one's spirit, Shepard. A family is simply the weakest link in the chain."

The gargantuan metal monster then knelt down to Roahn's level, bringing his cracked faceplate to within a few inches of Roahn's visor. Roahn squeaked in fear, finding nothing but pure loathing reflected in the solitary and damaged gaze of the cyborg. She tried not to look into the blackened hole where a bloody mass seemed to reside past the metal barrier, finding nothing but evil personified in that space. Shepard instinctively twitched in the Legionnaire's direction, horrified that such a beast would even think of getting so close to his daughter.

" _Don't you touch her!_ " he bellowed, his throat nearly tearing for how loudly he screamed.

The Legionnaire did not respond at first, for he simply amused himself by gently lifting the Predator pistol away from Roahn's holster. The gun looked like a child's toy in the Legionnaire's hand, and he carelessly tossed it to the side to collect dirt, the frame tumbling end over end upon the stones.

"Come along with us, cease your resistance," the Legionnaire hissed to Shepard, sliding out the blade in his wrist for good measure, now angling it towards Roahn's throat, who whimpered in sheer terror. "And she won't be hurt," he finished.

Shepard's heart seemed to be collapsing in on itself at the very sight of his daughter being so forcefully threatened. Not Roahn… not her. Anything else could come to pass, but she could not be hurt. He promised Tali that nothing would happen to their child. He needed to keep that promise.

 _My baby. Don't hurt my daughter_.

Shepard went limp.

A chuckle escaped the Legionnaire and he made a short gesture to the troopers holding Roahn after he retracted his blade back into his body. The soldiers rudely deposited the girl onto the floor, who cried out again as her shins smacked hard ground. The Legionnaire just stepped over her as he made his way to Shepard, who was now listless, his eyes glazed over as his skin turned clammy and his vision heavily grayed.

"I wouldn't worry too much," he spoke to his prisoner. "In no time, this will all be a distant memory. You'll be reunited with your daughter very soon and you might just have the chance to forget all of us."

" _She… pard_ …" a low-pitched voice grumbled from afar.

The seconds seemed to dilute themselves as both the Legionnaire and Shepard witnessed Wrex stagger back to his feet, using the war hammer as a temporary crutch. Blood continued to flow from the stump of Wrex's arm as well as all down the right side of his face, staining his armor a sickly color of orange. The krogan then tensed his arm one final time, lifting the entire weight of the hammer up off the ground and into the air, readying it, steadying himself, as his knees bent in preparation.

The Legionnaire shook his head in disbelief, but brought out his wrist blade again anyway. "All for one human…" the monster whispered as he stepped away from Shepard. "You can always sit down."

Wrex seemed insulted that he was being addressed in such a condescending manner, and he bared bloodstained teeth in response.

"I'll never have a more glorious moment," the krogan coughed, knees trembling as they nearly locked. "To die as a _krantt_ … would be an honor."

"Wrex, _no!_ " Shepard shouted, but his plea fell on deaf ears.

The Legionnaire impassively growled. "You will only be another obstacle."

Shifting his feet into a combat stance, the Legionnaire gave a singular nod, a brief acceptance towards the challenge that Wrex had posed. The cyborg raised his arm up, levelling his blade parallel to the ground. He cocked his elbow back, pointing the tip straight at the krogan, a flare briefly glimmering upon the sharpened point.

A carnivorous bird gave a harsh cry.

The wind buffeted a funnel of dust across the plain.

Dreadnoughts crumpled to pieces in fiery explosions many miles away—a second sun that warmed the baked crust.

A peaceful instant briefly flared amongst the detritus. Lingering amongst the glorious light and the dry temperatures that soaked into the skin, a perfect moment was to be had here.

Life was just the pursuit of these fleeting moments, anyway.

Wrex leapt and swung his hammer one final time, pure air trailing behind the stone in its fearsome wake.

The Legionnaire broke from his stance at a sprinter's pace, sending a miniature sonic boom reverberating through the tangle of columns in the temple.

The hammer arced. The blade swung.

There was a brief mote of light that shimmered between the two combatants. A speck of illumination that seared as flesh and metal collided.

A swath of blood spewed out in a straight line, spattering the wall.

Both Wrex and the Legionnaire skidded to a stop opposite their original positions—Wrex panting hard while the Legionnaire stood perfectly frozen in his stance.

Another perfect moment slipped futilely by, unable to be clutched in a matter-based grip.

The war hammer finally slipped from Wrex's grip, emitting a _clong_ as the stone of the tool shattered the tile below it. A singular drop of blood fell from the krogan's chin. Tasting the sun upon his tongue, Wrex gave one final gasp before he pitched forward, his knees giving out from underneath him.

The krogan fell.

Shepard did not even realize that he was screaming. He could hear Roahn's own cries above the cacophony of the melee, but not his own. Even as he was being led away by the troopers while watching the Legionnaire carelessly clean his blade after stepping away from Wrex, Shepard could not take his eyes upon his collapsed friend. He screamed and screamed until he finally went hoarse.

The last thing that he saw before someone shoved a hood over his head was a thick pool of blood, its bright color burning its way into his eyes.

He heard his daughter cry out for her father, but he could not answer her back.

* * *

Minutes skipped by in tortured beats as Roahn crawled along the floor. Chimera had deserted the temple only a minute ago, but it had felt like an eternity to the girl. Shivering, tears streaming down her face, Roahn tenderly grasped at the ground to drag herself forward as dust bit into her enviro-suit, staining it a light shade of brown.

It was only when Roahn had reached a part of the floor that had been darkened from blood did she finally stop.

On her knees, Roahn sat up, hesitantly reaching out and touching cold, scaly flesh.

Wrex was crumpled before her, blood still leaking out of the large wound in his neck. The dying krogan seemed like a mountain to the girl, for his armored form dwarfed her at every turn. Still Roahn continued to lay her hand upon the arm of the krogan as the pool of blood slowly widened, nearly reaching her knees. She forced herself not to look at the fatal gash in his neck, knowing that there was nothing she could do to save Wrex.

His pulse seemed to reverberate in her very mind, ebbing and waning. It thrummed a faint beat, interlocking with the pounding of her heart. Roahn could not stop herself from crying at the sight. She lowered her head in shame, one of her hands barely able to wrap around one of Wrex's giant fingers.

"I'm sorry…" she whispered to the krogan, not knowing if he could still hear her. "I'm so sorry."

Roahn dissolved into sobs again. It seemed unfathomable—the death of a hero. With each final breath that Wrex was able to take, it felt like Roahn's own breath was being sucked out of her lungs. Her heart shattered and she wept. She cried for Wrex's pain.

Just then, Roahn felt the barest twinge of a reaction flex in Wrex's hands. A lingering, closing burst of energy before the end could overtake the krogan. The tears in Roahn's eyes stemmed just long enough for her to perceive Wrex's lone eye focusing upon her. He could _see_ her—he knew she was right there. Roahn hiccoughed, not knowing how she could comfort the krogan in his last moments.

"Sh… Shepard…?" the softest breath carried through Wrex's ruined trachea.

He was asking for her father.

Painfully, Roahn shook her head ever so slightly. "N-No… n-n-no, W-Wrex. I'm… I'm… I'm R-Roahn."

But the krogan's solitary eye continued to stare at her with intent, his head nudging forward just a millimeter. The grip on Roahn's hand barely tightened. A denial.

"… _Shepard_ …" Wrex whispered. Firm. Clear.

Wrex's hand slipped from Roahn's as the krogan used all of his remaining energy to muster his index finger into a point. The finger arced, marking a definite path through the air to impact straight upon Roahn. The girl looked at herself then back at Wrex, momentarily not understanding.

Wrex's lips slipped into a smile.

"Shepard."

His arm finally flopped down. His eye lidded shut. A long note of exhalation wisped through his throat.

Wrex fell still.

Roahn looked at her hands and saw the blood that had stained her suit upon her palms. Clumsily, she stood, but no more tears fell from her eyes. In a daze, she stumbled away from Wrex's body, but after giving him one last forlorn look.

Gentle hands gripped her shoulder and Roahn did not resist. It was when she saw that the hands holding her were draped in smooth blue scales. Liara. Roahn looked up to find Liara nursing quite a large bruise on her cheek. Behind her, Garrus was groaning as blood leaked from the corner of his mouth. Both said nothing to Roahn and Liara was trying her hardest to conjure a sympathetic word to the girl, but like Roahn had felt earlier, none of them could escape the sight of their friend lying dead at their feet. It was like they had all come to the realization as to the futileness of their purpose and the fleeting grip that life held over them.

"He tried to save him," Roahn finally managed, her eyes helplessly locked onto the corpse.

"I know," Liara whispered. "I know."

"My father," Roahn continued. "He was only trying to help my fath—"

With a start, Roahn cut herself off, only now realizing what the krogan had meant with his final word. It had encapsulated what Wrex had been able to see all this time, what should have been obvious to Roahn… but she had deliberately blinded herself to such a fact.

Wrex had not been asking for her father, Roahn understood. No, he had simply stated what Roahn had unknowingly wanted to hear.

 _I can protect those I care about. Those I love._

The whine of a shuttlecraft's engines igniting caused Roahn's head to whip all the way around. Her _sehni_ caught the breeze, forcing her back a step. From the overhand, Roahn could see the dull silver of metal fins start to rise up as a nearby ship began to conduct liftoff preparations. Chimera. They were getting away. With her father.

But… from what she could see, the embarking ramp was still open, even as the shuttle levitated off the ground.

 _I can do the right thing._

As Liara's hand briefly lifted off from Roahn's shoulder, she seized her chance.

The young quarian, without warning, suddenly darted out of Liara's reach, her eyes thin and full of determination, her mouth locked into a fierce grimace as growls started to uncontrollably emit from her throat. She ignored the shocked cries of her name from Liara and Garrus behind her, and she briefly stooped down to pluck up the Predator pistol from where it had been deposited earlier. With the weapon in an iron grip, Roahn hurled herself forward as she pushed herself as hard as she could towards the outcropping of the temple that was just about to line itself up with the ramp of the shuttle.

Roahn's calves began to burn as she mustered her muscles to move faster than they had ever gone in her life. Her lungs strained and felt like they were about to burst. Sweat clung to her skin, itching all over. She gasped in her efforts, imagining that she was ripping herself to pieces. It was like she would collapse into several parts, ruined beyond belief, as she held the open ramp in her sights, desperate with her frantic panic.

Five steps to go.

Four.

Three.

Two.

One.

Roahn screamed as she leaped, her last step curling around the lip of the stone ledge, her toes clutching at solid matter before she let herself be taken by the open air. Her stomach plummeted. Her eyes watered. Her hands strained themselves as they stretched out of her sockets and she let loose another howl in her agony.

A second clicked by. Roahn still flew.

The ramp of the shuttle slowly came into her reach.

Her fingers then grasped something solid.

* * *

 **A/N: Dun. Dun. Dun. Another one bites the dust. ( _...I am so sorry!_ )**

 **Playlist:**

 **Legionnaire Battle (Cyborg Theme II): "Angering Mantis" by Justin Burnett from the video game _Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain_**

 **Wrex's Last Stand: "We Stand Ready" by Neal Acree from the video game _StarCraft II: Legacy of the Void_**

 **Roahn Leaps Aboard: "Like a Fire" by John Ottman from the film _X-Men: Apocalypse_**


	16. Chapter 16: Hell Awaits

" _In reviewing several of Chimera's assignment documents, we have noticed some discrepancies that reflect poorly with the original way that your contract was doled out. Mostly pertaining to the fact that nations within the Alliance have clauses of their own that have been rendered against organizations like Chimera in the past, yet the Alliance has gone on to pursue this contract regardless. Particularly, several small nations all over the world have banned the presence of PMCs entirely. Some specifically state Chimera in their filing documents, others don't, yet the distinction still stands. Liechtenstein, Moldova, Monaco, and many island nations in Micronesia and Polynesia are among these countries to specifically exclude the usage of PMCs."  
_ Sen. Leuzinger, EU – Switzerland

" _Do they really? Well, legal doesn't tell me everything, you know. If these countries don't offer our organization a financial potential above a set percentage of income, it's frankly not all that important to me."_  
Erich Koenig, CEO – Chimera

" _Yet being physically barred from operating beyond a determined set of borders is also something that would not interest you? Would you like to know why these countries have specifically denied your services?"  
_ Sen. Leuzinger, EU – Switzerland

" _I'll bite, senator. Why?"_  
Erich Koenig, CEO – Chimera

" _Let's see, here. We've got… accusations of environment destruction—a case in which some soldiers toppled over a sacred island statue on Samoa—… evidence of looting and criminality—Chimera soldiers apparently raided the wrong apartment complex over in Luxembourg—… and mostly the list goes on of how the prototypical PMC behavior is to treat their temporary environment, that is wherever they happen to be deployed, with a kind of disdain."  
_ Sen. Leuzinger, EU – Switzerland

" _I know what you're trying to do, senator, and can I state for the record, I'm none too happy. Rest assured, I will be making my true intentions felt during my next round of statements, because this sort of character attack is deeply embarrassing and altogether a waste of time. I'm not going to just sit here while all of you attempt to tarnish my company. I will clear my name in a few hours' time. Mark my words."  
_ Erich Koenig, CEO – Chimera

" _I'm sure we will all be riveted by your statements, Mr. Koenig."_  
Sen. Leuzinger, EU – Switzerland

* * *

The dark hood that had been shoved over Shepard's head mere minutes ago had brought with it the side effect of diluting all sense of time and space. Hoisted by two men—each one grasping a strong arm—and being led down twisting hallway after hallway probably did not help matters much, either. Shepard had lost most of his control over his motor skills—he could only step in the direction that his captors were leading him in and he was unable to see where he was going. Not to mention that his hands were cuffed behind his back so that he had no chance of yanking the hood off of his head. Blind as a bat, Shepard essentially had only his hearing to even have a hope of trying to picture his surroundings… and even that particular sense had its limits in humans.

This was all part of the standard prisoner detainment procedure that Shepard was so familiar with: detain, disorient, and deprive.

Shepard's breath was stuffy and hot as he breathed into his hood. His eyes found only dark to comfort him. The muscles in his legs were beginning to cramp up, sending tendrils of pain spiraling into his bones. Shepard lost track of the amount of time he had been walking. It might have been only a minute… or it could have been ten. Hell, imagining that he had been walking for an hour would not be too much of a stretch. With his amount of basic senses lessened, his brain was running on emergency power, desperately trying to create meaning from a lack of stimuli. However, it was more or less an unfortunate fact that the brain's attempts to rectify its surroundings when stressed were usually and completely wrong. Shepard's senses would inevitably fail him if things kept up like this.

The disoriented Shepard soon felt a new pressure in his ears expand—a subtle sign that the room he must have just entered was a little bit more cavernous than the last. Strong hands then abruptly grabbed at his legs and propped him up so that he was being dangled in the air, his body parallel to the ground. His hands were then forced apart from the cuffs for just a moment before he felt heavier gauntlets being placed over each individual appendage, feet included. There was another long second of discombobulation, followed by a stomach-turning moment of weightlessness as the force hoisting him upward suddenly disappeared and he fell for half a second. In that half second, Shepard had already braced himself, preparing for his chest to feel a rapid impact and for all of the breath to be pushed out from his lungs once he hit the floor gut first.

But a new force tugged upon him before any of that could happen, pulling at his limbs as though he had strings attached to him. Shepard grunted a bit as he felt his lungs unclench in surprise, the stress that had tightened around him now being able to loosen ever so slightly. He felt himself bob in midair, as if he was not being completely supported by a weight that had been securely fastened, like he was being held aloft by rubber bands.

The Chimera troopers were no longer touching him, and now a new set of footsteps were joining in, easily discernable by the heavy sound of metal upon metal. Shepard sucked part of the hood in his mouth as his breath quickened, panic heating up the dark sack as he floundered in this pit.

"Leave us," the Legionnaire's damaged rasp filtered through the hood.

The troopers grumbled their acknowledgements and quickly shuffled out. If Shepard had not been able to hear, then he would not have discerned this scrap of his surroundings at all.

A very solid hand then roughly grasped at Shepard's hood before tearing it off, ripping out some of his hair in the process. Shepard gasped as cold air was finally allowed to rush into his lungs, the sweat on his face already in the process of evaporating. It felt like he had been doused with a bucket of arctic water, the previous stuffiness already becoming a distant memory.

Now that he was finally afforded this moment to see, Shepard tried to take stock of his surroundings as quickly as possible, knowing that time was of the essence. The chamber he was in now looked more akin to a converted hangar rather than the cramped interior of a heavy shuttle. Chimera must have transferred him to one of their larger ships while he had been blindfolded. A series of walkways with no guardrails formed a cross with him apparently positioned right in the center of the room. The walkways did not span a bottomless pit, instead they simply extended a few feet over the floor, which was sloped down in the curved shape of a hemisphere. A rather large space if its only intent was to hold one prisoner, Shepard figured. A few small windows in the corner shone with bright wisps of energy—a sign that they were currently in FTL. Where to, was anyone's guess. Certainly not his.

Shepard craned his head behind him and saw that Chimera had completely encased his hands and feet with solid electromagnetic gauntlets—emitters in the ceiling and in the floor dutifully hummed as slow moving, almost liquid, bolts of electricity flowed from them towards the gauntlets. Magnetism kept Shepard suspended in a flat position in the air—his arms were bent so that they would not be locked and would otherwise restrict blood flow. Actually, in his current position, it was not too uncomfortable. There was no debilitating pressure being exerted on his body—it felt like he was floating weightless at the moment. There were certainly worse positions to be restrained in. He remembered seeing a similar sort of contraption back during the Cerberus occupation on Omega; a general had used such a device to pacify Aria T'Loak for a short time. And now a similar contraption was being used on him.

Finally succumbing to the inevitable, Shepard lifted his head up to find the Legionnaire serenely staring right back at him. The cyborg's head was still cracked and dented from surviving his little bout with Wrex, half his optics functioning, a few sparks still dribbling their way out from the dark cavern past the armor plating. Shepard twisted his mouth into a fine line, feeling a bit humiliated while dangling in his position.

"Where is my daughter?" he spoke slowly, dangerously.

The Legionnaire let Shepard stew in his fears for a bit before deliberately responding. "Still on Tuchanka, I reckon."

Shepard tried not to let his instinctive sigh of relief show, but he could not help it. Of course, there was always the risk that the Legionnaire was simply lying, but until he had proof to the contrary, he was just going to have to take all of this at face value.

"She's not part of the current deal, Shepard," the Legionnaire continued to assuage his captive. "I have no reason to string her along for this. Relax. In less than 48 hours, you'll be reunited once again, free to return to your home. Best of all, you won't ever have to feel persecuted anymore."

That was of little comfort, for Shepard had just gotten the inclination to test the strength of his bonds. He struggled in the grip of the gauntlets, finding that they provided a fair amount of slack, but he was being levitated so far away from anything that it would take a gargantuan feat of strength to even brush up against the nearest physical surface. The electromagnet emitters then started to whine after a few seconds of Shepard resisting, and soon the human was pulled back into his normal resting position with a snap, the acceleration rippling all throughout his body.

The Legionnaire had not moved at all while watching Shepard fidget, his blank face radiating apprehension. Shepard's limbs quaked as he gasped, already feeling both the physical and emotional fatigue of being constrained in such a position. A headache burst to life in the corner of his head. He made a soft noise of pain.

"You killed Wrex," he was able to manage as he willed himself to last through the sudden flare-up of agony that drilled into his skull.

"I did," he heard his foe affirm. "He died bravely, no doubt about it. But uselessly."

" _Uselessly?_ " Shepard barked, snapping his head upright.

"There was no need for the krogan to _die_ for you. After all, you were never in that much danger to begin with. The ironic thing is that if Wrex had simply stepped aside, he would still be alive right now. Yet, he resisted, and there's no one to blame but himself for that."

Shepard roared as he shook himself within his restraints. Bolts of lightning flared from the emitters and there was a wrenching noise of light tearing into the fabric of sound as the powerful magnets lurched Shepard into place. The human continued to bellow, spittle flying from his mouth, as he manifested his defiance into that one long note, his requiem for his friend.

Wrex. The two of them had been through a lot together. Saren's rebellion. The battle for Tuchanka. Various misadventures on the Citadel. Now… no more. Just like Tali. Another friend there one moment and gone the next.

It was almost too much for Shepard to take. Wrex should have been allowed to have died of old age, as befitting a warrior like him who had rarely tasted defeat, rather than lying in a pool of his own blood in a dusty temple on the edge of civilization. The ignominy of it all—how easily his friends had been cast aside—was a cruel stroke that lodged deep into Shepard's heart, right next to the other imaginary blades that had pierced that vital organ over the years. Riddled with holes in his head, Shepard envisioned himself bleeding.

 _First Tali… now Wrex. I never wanted this for them. They all died for me. Why did it have to be me?_

All the while, the Legionnaire watched Shepard's anger consume itself like an oxygen-starved lick of flame before burning out in a fierce and deep gasp. The right side of the cyborg's face had been horribly twisted by Wrex's last attack, giving him the effect that he was wickedly smiling, a cruel grin gnashing its way through the ragged tears in his face. An open maw, hungry and eager.

The cyborg then extended a hand after he was sure that Shepard was done with crying out, a purple pill rolling around in his metallic palm. Shepard, drool now leaking from the corner of his mouth, eyed the medication apprehensively, keeping his face neutral as he pondered the upcoming events, finding none of them to be in his favor.

"A sedative?" Shepard grimaced as he eyed the pill.

The Legionnaire slowly shook his head. "Something to that effect, but we don't need to have you put completely under, Shepard."

"Shame. I'd probably prefer that."

"I know you would. But life is seldom fair. This, right here, is sodium thiopental. A common barbiturate."

"Ah, I see," Shepard grumbled. "You're going to try and alter my mind, is that it? Inject me full of drugs so that I'm a babbling and listless mess before we reach… wherever we're going, right?"

A rasping wheeze of a laugh caught Shepard off guard as the Legionnaire jerked once in mirth. "Shepard, if I wanted to make you into a hare-brained idiot, I would simply hook you up to a machine that would automatically disperse adrenaline and other addictive substances directly into your bloodstream to keep you in an intoxicated state. Alas, that is not going to be the case with you. I told you that I was specifically instructed not to leave any lasting marks. An injection site would definitely be noticed from a thorough medical examination. Thus, the pill. Fast-acting within five minutes, and untraceable. Also, it's safe for you to ingest." When Shepard still looked unconvinced, the Legionnaire continued. "Trust me, if I wanted to poison you, I can think of at least a dozen easier methods than this."

"So what does sodium thiopental do?"

"In larger doses, it is commonly used for anesthetic purposes. Causes unconsciousness in less than a minute if applied intravenously. In lower doses, it does have an allaying effect by slightly changing the chemistry of the brain. Makes the subject more… pliant. Lowers your inhibitions—your higher cortical functions."

Now Shepard was thoroughly worried as his gaze returned to the small pill, fully knowing the extent of damage such a tiny amount of that medication could do. "All this for a stupid testimony? If word gets out that you applied a truth serum to me in order to force me to say something, that'll wreck Larsen's entire narrative. It'll be inadmissible evidence."

"Which is why we're not planning on using this interrogation run now as your official admission," the Legionnaire sneered as he held out the pill towards Shepard's mouth. "This is merely our insurance. If you say anything pertinent today, then it will become controversy tomorrow. Regardless of what you might blather today while under the influence, there will be some in positions of power to question why you would say such things, even under duress. You will have your day in court, Shepard. Subject completely to a fair trial without being prodded by medication. This… is simply the beginning. Might as well get used to it."

Suspended in his demeaning position, Shepard hung his head towards the ground temporarily before he beheld his tormentor. "It won't work, you know. Your plan, I mean."

"Then there won't be anything for you to worry about," the Legionnaire responded as he tipped the pill right at Shepard's lips. "Now open up."

Shepard kept his mouth sealed tightly, his cold blue eyes locked firmly upon the still working left side of the Legionnaire's array of oculi, sending icy shards of contempt to smash against the calm inferno present within the machine's own gaze.

"Don't make this harder than necessary," the cyborg's voice lowered to a whisper. "You do not want this to go any other way. Now… _open up_."

Despite doubt rearing its head, Shepard slowly pried open his own jaw and the Legionnaire tipped the pill inside.

"No water?" Shepard mumbled around the oblong object.

"You'll just have to do without," the Legionnaire responded in a matter-of-fact way.

Shepard gave a mental shrug and, after some effort orienting the pill in his mouth, eventually swallowed it. Without liquid acting as a conductive agent, the pill felt like it was bulging his esophagus as it travelled towards his stomach, almost as if he had swallowed a cannonball instead.

While Shepard was in the process of doing that, the Legionnaire had turned away as a floating tool chest had positioned itself close to the cyborg. The Legionnaire raised his damaged left arm and flexed his fingers—testing his range of functionality. Ruined gears and hydraulics stuttered and ground against one another, producing a rather uncomfortable noise. Clearly being smashed with a krogan war hammer had done a number on it. The Legionnaire did not seem to be too concerned about the damage, however, as he simply reached over with his good hand, gave his left forearm a complex series of twists and effortlessly popped the arm off just where it met his elbow.

Shepard could only watch as the Legionnaire laid the detached arm down upon a tray—where various tools of all shapes and sizes had been perfectly lined upon the topmost stretch. A panel popped open and out came another arm, to the exact same dimensions as the last one, only this one was polished to a fine sheen and completely devoid of any scratches or other markings. Swiftly, the Legionnaire plucked the arm up from where it had been offered and latched it onto the stump at his elbow. The cyborg repeated the same series of twists as he had performed to get the original arm off, but this time in reverse. With a hiss and a firm clacking noise, the arm seamlessly integrated itself to the Legionnaire. He waggled each individual finger and clenched a fist, testing if it was up to snuff. After a few seconds, he was satisfied with the repair job and soon moved onto other affairs.

The Legionnaire then tenderly touched the cracked portion of his faceplate, the area where Wrex had nearly shattered it with a blow from his war hammer. Like his arm, this was also something that was beyond a simple repair job. The entire helmet needed to be replaced. Fortunately, the offered toolset had every kind of spare part for the Legionnaire to utilize for such an occasion. Clearly Chimera had been thinking ahead with regards to keeping a safety stock of parts in case they were needed.

Ignoring his captive for the moment, the Legionnaire raised his hands up and gently tugged at the hoses connecting his mask to his chassis. There was a hiss and a blast of pressurized oxygen escaped into the air in a frosty mist. With the hoses now dangling, the Legionnaire reached underneath his helmet, where his neck met his head, and fiddled with a few hidden latches and clasps to remove it. In a few seconds, all the diodes of the helmet quickly winked out and the entire contraption seemed to shift and expand with a series of three clicks. With the helmet unlocked, the Legionnaire was free to remove it.

What Shepard saw underneath the metal covering made every single square inch of his skin crawl, his stomach start to churn, and the chemicals in his brain to begin fizzing with alarm.

A skull, slightly cracked, matted with dried blood, and wreathed all around by the metal collar of the chassis, now sat exposed underneath the dim and murky blue lighting of the room. Rounded bone, spots of blood clinging to its surface, shone dully as the Legionnaire placed the remains of his original helmet upon the bench. The cyborg then turned slightly, allowing Shepard a frontal view. It was even worse looking at him from the front. The Legionnaire's eyes were twin black holes, gaping and empty, with wires burrowing into them and trailing around the sides of his head. Tubes snaked into the nostrils of the skull, still faintly hissing as a constant supply of gas surged within them. A few metal implants had been directly screwed onto the sides of the skull, all of them blinking faintly, impassive in the face of its hideous owner. Life support systems glowed in tiny holographic displays around the skull, creating a translucent array of data in a throbbing barrier of light.

Shepard's jaw fell open and continued to stay that way until the Legionnaire had procured a new helmet, the same model as the last one, and fastened it over his head, covering the bloody skull up once more. The helmet clicked as it fastened itself tightly around what remained of his original head, and the tubes that connected to the underside made sucking noises as they were plugged into the miters. All eight of the orange diodes now exploded to life, creating an array of fire within the glum darkness.

"There," the Legionnaire practically hummed with delight, his lower timbre now growling in tandem with the higher register. "That's better."

With a clanking noise, the Legionnaire stomped over towards where Shepard was hanging. The human still had a dumbfounded expression upon his face.

"What… the hell _are_ you?" he could only ask.

"A shadow. The broken remains of a something that had been alive once. An imperfect union of flesh and metal." The Legionnaire flexed a hand for emphasis. "Clearly, I am something that should never have been, for this… all of this was a second chance that I never wanted in the first place. Chimera claimed my broken body, took out all the bits that they didn't need, and shoved the rest into this thing. Me." The cyborg then tilted his head in consideration. "Yet it is all immaterial. Whoever I used to be matters little now. I have no recollection to my past. My memories were all purged when I was brought online. For all I know, we very well could have met in my previous life. We might even have known each other quite well at one point."

The Legionnaire then rolled his neck—a very organic tic—and shook out his shoulders, lubricated joints whirring almost silently.

"You just sound like you're trying to shirk responsibility," Shepard growled as he continued to hang in place. "I don't care who you used to be. You're nothing but a menace. You killed my friend."

"Which one?" the Legionnaire roughly chuckled as he stopped testing out his new additions to his body. "Are you referring to the krogan? Or Admiral Hackett, perhaps? Or even… Aria T'Loak—if you ever thought of her as a friend, that is?"

Shepard was at a loss for words, stupefied, while the Legionnaire gazed dispassionately at him.

"I see that you were unaware of how I utilized my time while you were out roaming the galaxy," the Legionnaire said. "If it is any comfort, none besides the late Urdnot Wrex were killed specifically because of their association to you. Hackett was eliminated because he was a danger to the organization. T'Loak tested our wrath by taking out a few of our employees. They merely received the punishments that were most fitting for them. It is not in my programming to disobey an order—Chimera carved that intuition right out of my brain. I'm not one to look back on previous kills with remorse."

Shepard surged uselessly against his bonds, barely able to shift himself half a foot in a mindless bid to throw himself at the Legionnaire. The cyborg did not so much as flinch because he intrinsically knew that the electromagnetic gauntlets were foolproof—it would be impossible for Shepard, in his position, to break the bonds. And even if he did escape, what damage could he do to a man made out of metal with just his bare fists?

"By all means," the Legionnaire beckoned drolly, "keep up the resistance. It will just accelerate your metabolism and cause the sodium thiopental to take effect much more quickly. We'll all have our timetable moved up on your behalf."

"Fuck off and go to hell."

"I'm _living_ in my own hell right now, Shepard," the Legionnaire barked back. "You'll have to do better than that."

 _Wrex… Hackett… Aria… how many more will fall to this bastard?_

"Let me out of this infernal thing… and I'll _show_ you better."

"Tempting, but no. I'm not so arrogant to fall to any attempts to stroke an ego, Shepard. Besides, we don't have much time together, you and I. We might as well make the most of things while it can last."

"Yeah, right," Shepard panted, sweat now starting to trickle down his temples in thin rivulets. "We both know you're running out of time. You just signed Chimera's death warrant with that little stunt of yours. Blowing up several Alliance dreadnoughts on the krogan homeworld? That will bring the wrath of the government and the Council down upon all of your heads so quickly that you won't have time to think."

The Legionnaire processed Shepard's words for a full second before he broke out into a low series of laughs. Each resounding peal wrapped its way around the wide egg-shaped room, bouncing off the walls and creating miniature vortexes of speech as each individual wave collided with one another.

"Ordinarily, that would be true…" the Legionnaire uttered as he knelt down to appraise the bound human, "…but I think the resulting investigation will point everyone in another direction."

Shepard turned his head as he inhaled sharply. "What do you mean?"

"The Alliance's Nuclear Regulation Bureau is an archaic body whose efficiency has long been called into question—their investigation methods are known to us, considering Chimera's experience dealing with government affairs. You were right earlier when you said that Chimera is not a nuclear power. That is true. We aren't. Chimera does not have any facilities under its purview that pertain towards the creation of nuclear weapons. The honor of having such widespread governance is only bestowed towards the four Council races, each species possessing their own telltale tricks of the trade on how to build a nuclear bomb."

The Legionnaire hissed in another breath before he continued. "When the NRB will make it to the blast site on Tuchanka, they will start conducting their investigation with trying to determine the origin of the bomb. After all, if you find the origin, you will most likely determine the perpetrator, as there's usually a significant correlation. What the NRB will find in the radioactive debris will be faint traces of the hydrogen-2 and -3 isotopes: deuterium and tritium. There is only one facility in the galaxy that manufactures pure fusion bombs with those particular isotopes: the nuclear foundry on Menae, the main moon of the turian homeworld, Palaven. The conclusion should become quite apparent for everyone involved. When everyone finds out that the bomb was turian-manufactured, the next line of questioning will all be directed towards our avian allies: how did such a bomb get from Menae to Tuchanka? The turians will be scrambling to contain the fallout, the krogans will want answers, and Chimera will continue unabated. At least, that's the idea."

"And you told me all of this," Shepard gasped, his mind swimming as he fought to make heads or tails of this knowledge. "Why?"

"Because your words won't be enough to penetrate the veil of plausible deniability Chimera has set up for itself. The evidence garnered from the remains of the nuclear blast will be far more heavily weighted. It will become the 'truth,' and nothing that you would be able to say to the contrary could deconstruct the narrative at play here."

Shepard then suddenly winced as a sudden twinge ached in his shoulder and lower back simultaneously. It felt like his bones had suddenly ground together on top of his nerve endings, creating a quick shock of pain that lingered long after he had registered it. Still, it was enough of a warning sign for Shepard to start breathing a lot more heavily, knowing with dread just how bad the implications of this were going to be.

Not to mention that Shepard realized that it had been too long since he had last administered his medication.

 _No… not now. Please… I can't have these side effects cropping up on me now…_

The Legionnaire noticed these subtle changes occurring within Shepard and he extended a metal hand, his cold fingers probing at Shepard's face, forcing his left lower eyelid to droop downward while the cyborg quickly examined him.

"Effects of radiation poisoning?" the two-toned voice gnashed together. "Ah, yes. You must not have properly dosed yourself beforehand. No matter—we both know your case is not fatal. Just extremely debilitating. And since the sodium thiopental is appearing to take effect, I'd say that now is the best time to become reacquainted with our host."

"Re-reacquainted?" Shepard gasped as a pocket of gas began to press upon his heart, driving out his breath like a stake slowly pressing in between his ribs. "With who?"

There was the sort of lingering anticipation that had dredged itself within the Legionnaire of the sort that spoiling the surprise too soon would physically take away the joy of such a revelation. As such, the cyborg finally remained mum on this point as he raised his hand, now encased by his omni-tool, and tapped a singular button upon the haptic interface. A signal was shot out into space, carried by waves of energy travelling at the speed of light, impacting from satellite to satellite, as it sought out the end user. Five seconds later, the call connected—traversing a length of several lightyears—and an aqua-colored holographic image burst forth from the rotating crystals levelled over the imaging pad. Static blended and eventually consolidated itself into a humanoid form, projecting the figure of a man with a deep well of confidence. Sharp suit, slick hair, finely trimmed goatee, powerful frame.

The hologram stepped forward, off the pad, and made his way towards where Shepard was trussed up like a Thanksgiving dinner. The man silently appraised the hanging prisoner, folding his hands behind his back as a cruel smile flitted across his features.

" _Hello… Shepard_ ," the man spoke. Deep voice, roughed from age. His small eyes beaded into fine points as his grin spread ever so slightly.

In his current position, Shepard could only sigh in resignation.

"Hello, Raynor."

* * *

Somewhere, deep within the cavernous bowels of the ship, a door parted with a nearly-silent whooshing noise, the sound unheard by the crew of the craft except for one lone individual.

Quickly, Roahn darted through the opening that the door had provided, her shunt bypass only allowing her precious few seconds to make it through the partition unobstructed. A short bit later, the program ran its course from the door mainframe and quietly deleted itself. The door resumed its shut position, but the young quarian had already passed it by as easily as if she could simply materialize through the walls.

Roahn had been frantically navigating the hallways of the Chimera ship for about a quarter of an hour now, hugging the walls as she deliberately traversed her way through corridor after corridor. It did not help that every single passageway on this damn ship looked exactly the same: ribbed metallic walls, polished floors, and no signs to guide her anywhere. The ship was four stories tall with some kind of courtyard-like structure in the middle where each individual story was stacked up in rings so that anyone could look over the glass guardrails to see the entire height of the ship from head to toe. Roahn was keen to avoid that area as she would be most at risk for detection in such an open area – it was frankly a miracle that she had not gotten caught just yet, either.

When Roahn had leapt her way on board the shuttle taking off from Tuchanka, she had immediately sought out an empty crate lying in a darkened corner, well away from prying eyes. She stayed in the crate until she felt a noticeable lurch through the acceleration dampeners—usually an indication of landing. The ship had not been travelling for that long, which either meant to Roahn that Chimera had parked elsewhere on Tuchanka or that the shuttle had linked up with a larger ship, one that had the capability for FTL and that could traverse the relay network.

Once the background voices and all other noises had quieted, Roahn had deliberately waited five minutes until she was absolutely sure that there was no one around her current position. When she had poked her head out from the crate, she found to her relief that the entire shuttle was empty.

But that also meant that her father was no longer here as well. Chimera had carried him away to who knows where. She needed to find him.

Poking her head out from the entrance of the shuttle had revealed that Chimera had left no guards at all to guard the place. Either they were so arrogant to assume that a PMC did not need to guard their own ship, or this entire vessel was equipped with a skeleton crew. Roahn knew better than to look a gift horse in the mouth, so she just considered herself lucky and scampered towards the exit, intent on locating her father.

As Roahn continued to travel, she encountered the occasional guard patrolling the length of the ship. This was mitigated by ducking into a crevasse or behind some tied down luggage to use for cover—the troopers here were not very alert and seemed to consider guarding the hallways on this ship to be more of a bore than an essential duty. Credit where it was due, it would have been terribly difficult for them to spot the diminutive form of the young quarian, who was operating on lightning reflexes and on red-hot nerves to use all her senses to her advantage in keeping herself hidden. The men here were all sleep-deprived, and in some cases, bored out of their minds so much they were zoning out as they walked. Never mind the fact that their boss, the Legionnaire, had just returned from a lively campaign back on Tuchanka—that excitement had passed long enough for the monotony to set in once more.

One thing that Roahn was particularly worried about were security cameras. She had no idea what the security capabilities of this ship were—namely, if there was anyone manning a station for the cameras. It would be foolish of her not to assume that the hallways were being watched, but despite all that, she had not seen a single camera since setting foot upon the ship. That either meant they were hidden, or Chimera was so cheap that they had not even installed them.

As soon as she was able, Roahn ducked into a closet to collect her thoughts. Like the rest of the rooms here, the tiny square box was nearly completely devoid of items except for a lone crate filled to the brim with paper towels. She used her omni-tool to lock the door to ensure that no one would pop in and surprise her.

From the few glances she had spared around the interior, Roahn was able to determine that this ship was a slightly modified Kowloon-class freighter. A mass-produced, standard design craft amenable to a near infinitude of customizations. Probably the easiest ship in the galaxy to pilot in terms of skill, Roahn figured. Autopilot usually did most of the work, and the engine systems all came with automated protocols as standard. And, if she remembered the brochure correctly, the basic configuration for a Kowloon freighter was to place the security terminal within the engine room itself. That might not be the case on this particular vessel, but if the bareness of the craft here was to be ascertained, Roahn would be able to assume that Chimera was too lazy to modify their vessels in any way to save on expenses.

A quick extranet search of the exact specifications of this freighter revealed an accurate blueprint of each individual level of the craft, to Roahn's satisfaction. The only problem that she could ascertain was that the engine room (and security station) was on the other side of the open courtyard. No way could she make it over there without being spotted. There had to be another way.

The nice thing about perseverance is that such dedication is bound to have a payoff eventually.

Armed with new knowledge from perusing the extranet some more, Roahn slowly glanced upward and spied the air grate just over her head. The square tubing of the ventilation system was exposed as it ran across the ceiling, giving the entirety of the ship a very threadbare appearance. Just what she was looking for.

Roahn maneuvered the lone crate in the room directly underneath the vent so that she could stand atop it and be able to reach the ceiling. Lifting her arms up, the girl fumbled for a moment around the edges of the vent before her fingers located the two latches holding it in place. She flipped them and the vent swung open, nearly conking the girl square in the middle of her visor—she had to duck as the hatch dangled.

The tubing looked just big enough for her to enter. A grown adult had no chance of fitting inside there, most certainly. Roahn stood back up and, after giving a few practice jumps, bent her knees and sprang upward, her fingers managing to grab at the edges of the vent, slippery with dust. She managed to hang on, her natural grip strength being utilized heavily in her favor here. Gasping with the effort, her legs dangling in open air, Roahn groaned as she slowly lifted herself up into the shaft, straining as she threw out her arms to grasp at more of the smooth surface area of the vent's interior. Her fingers left streaks upon the unwashed surface, but inch by inch, she slowly slid inside until she had finally made it. She had to spend a minute clumsily reorienting herself within the shaft so that she could close the vent behind her, but she was able to do it without any complications barring the way forward.

Now, using the theoretical plans on her omni-tool as a guide, Roahn proceeded at a crawl through the piping.

As Roahn clambered her way through the duct, it did occur to her that there was a sense of lunacy with regards to the intent of her actions. Her plan (could it really be called a plan?) was paper-thin at best, practically being made up as she went along, and the only thing she knew for certain was that the end goal was to free her father. To say that she was somewhat at odds with herself mentally was an understatement. She was operating on instinct and being tugged by invisible familial bonds. All to save a man that she had conflicted feelings for. Was this her way of expressing her love towards her father? Did she think that, at the end of all this, she might finally be able to pry forgiveness out of him, for all the missteps that he had performed during her life? Did she intend for the goodness of her act to act as a cutting blow to him—to cause him hurt for being so stubborn?

Roahn had to stop and think in the middle of the pipe, right after she had hooked a left to face a particularly long length.

Was she doing all this for his approval? Or could there be something else motivating her drive right now? A sense that this was her unspoken obligation—no, her duty to do something. Perhaps to knock a notch off of the stony veil that Shepard had erected for himself, separating him from his daughter all these years. Roahn bit her lip. She was not doing this for notoriety, she reasoned. Nor was she doing this because she felt she had the bare minimum of the ability to pull this off. The true reason lay deeper than that—a simpler solution, one more primal and instinctive, buried at the heart of all her senses and had taken root into the very fabric of who she was as a person. The sole purpose had hooked directly into her soul, pumping her with the sort of drive that acted as a chemical balancer, sending searing bubbles of intent scorching her very nerves.

The answer itself was as simple as it could get.

She was doing this because Shepard was her father. He was the only family she had.

"Damn it," she whispered to herself as a way to assuage her trembling self. With a few more wordless grumblings, Roahn started to move again, slowly making her way through the ductwork of the freighter.

Roahn made special care not to jiggle about so heavily, for she knew that if she placed one limb in the wrong area, she would create one hell of a racket in the ducts. She may have been a kid, but she was not weightless. Even someone of her size would be able to bang about very easily if she had not been taking care of how much noise she was making.

In spite of the danger, Roahn eventually made it to her end destination without much difficulty. Not bad for clambering about in this claustrophobic tangle with only the light of her omni-tool to guide her by. Roahn's electric blue visor peered down into the vent, trying to see past the grating. Visibility was not great, but she could not see any guards lurking about. Other than that, she could at least perceive the faintest glow of a security panel off in the corner, but the majority of her vision was still heavily obscured by the blind-formation of the vent.

Sooner or later, she was going to have to drop down there.

Resigned to her fate, Roahn reached down and gave the vent a firm shake. Like the last one, it swung open on silenced hinges, allowing a muted thrum to become apparent in the girl's eardrums. Taking a deep breath, she prepared herself to descend.

Somewhere along the way one of the signals in Roahn's brain must have gotten crossed upon its voyage to her limbs, because for a brief moment, Roahn temporarily had no idea how she was going to get down to the ground floor of the engine room without creating a cataclysmic amount of noise. Unfortunately, by that point, she was already feeling the tug of gravity upon her center, yanking her downward whether she liked it or not.

" _No!_ " Roahn squeaked out as her hands free-wheeled for a moment, noticeably smacking into the thin aluminum construction of the shaft, causing it to loudly vibrate. It was too late, as her legs had already slid out from the hole in the vent, her waist rapidly following it, and no matter how much she tried to dig her fingers against the smooth metal of the pipe, she was unable to find purchase.

For one heavy second of pure dread, Roahn's stomach fell upward as she plummeted.

Then her heels hit the ground and she pitched into a clumsy roll, making an " _Oof!_ " sound for good measure as she tumbled in a daze. The sounds of her body hitting the metal grating created uncomfortable clangs echoing across the cramped expanse of the engine room, which would have been acceptable on a normal occasion, except there was the fact that engine itself was pathetically sized and not very loud, not to mention there was a Chimera guard standing mere meters away from where Roahn had dropped down. There was no way that he could have missed her entrance.

"Hey!" Roahn heard the guard shout, thereby proving her point.

There was no time to think. Roahn quickly embarked at a run as she quickly slid underneath the security desk, dropping down half a story to land upon the thick He-3 pipes that pumped fuel to the reactors. She could hear thick footsteps clomping at a fierce run behind her and she knew that the guard was chasing her. An alarm had not been sounded yet—perhaps this man thought that he could deal with a kid just by himself?

Roahn realized she did not care about that last bit, honestly.

The guard had not followed Roahn over the desk, allowing the girl a few precious seconds to lose herself in the jungle of cables, angled pipes, and firm pillars that supported the freighter's main reactor. Roahn crawled through vines of hoses, each one buzzing with the rapid flow of liquid within. With her gloved hands, she could feel the grating shake as the Chimera trooper stomped through the engine bay, searching for her. Roahn's muted suit colors helped her blend in easily with the machinery here, but camouflage would only work for so long. The bay here was not very big and there was not a limitless amount of places for her to hide. On all fours, Roahn held back her whimpers as she shuffled underneath the machinery, keeping herself as flat as possible as she dropped below a generator.

Stilling her breath, Roahn strained her ears as she fought to penetrate the veneer of rustling and humming from the freighter's drive core, her auditory filters doing an admirable job of filtering out the excess white noise, but there were still too many sounds for her to discern the footsteps of the trooper that had spotted her.

Where the hell was he?

A tight grip then latched itself abruptly around Roahn's ankle. "Got you!" she heard the voice of the man shout out triumphantly as he began to yank Roahn out from under the generator.

Panic tore through Roahn all at once. She screamed and grabbed onto one of the posts that kept the generator off from the ground, latching herself to a firm point to prevent from being dragged away. The girl continued to cry out as the man grunted behind her, tugging at her legs to bring her out into the open.

 _No! No! No!_ Roahn thought in her blind frenzy, too scared to even speak. The pressure at her ankle was approaching a crushing level now. It felt like her foot was about to be snapped off, but she dared not let go. If she lost her grip, there was no telling what would happen to her. For all she knew, she would be killed right then and there… or perhaps worse.

The girl yelled in pain and, as a last ditch resort, performed the only defensive maneuver she could think of by reeling her free foot back and lashing out in a mindless strike.

Roahn felt her ankle connect with something solid. There was a wet _snap_ , and the grip around her ankle immediately fell away.

She looked behind her in a panicked glance to see the human reel back onto his haunches, squealing profusely as blood began to gush from his nose, dribbling all around his mouth and down his chin, producing wet gurgles in his breathing. Roahn realized she must have broken the man's nose when she kicked him. She was not going to waste this moment though, as she frantically clawed at the ground, her fingers finding the purchase they needed in the wide grating as she dragged herself out from the other side of the generator and stumbled to her feet.

"Come back here!" the man bellowed through the blood around his mouth, the sound frightfully loud in Roahn's ears. Startled by the shout, Roahn stumbled over a bundle of cables bolted onto the ground, her center of gravity immediately becoming undone as she pinwheeled her arms, desperate not to trip. Too late, as Roahn finally fell to the ground, banging her knees rather hard as she skidded along the ground towards the security desk. She grunted—it felt like she had skinned her legs underneath her suit. There was a strong possibility that she was bleeding.

The injured Chimera trooper had risen to his feet by that point, his tiny eyes looking particularly frightful as he spun in all directions in an attempt to locate his fleeing prey. Once he spotted the fallen Roahn at the base of the security desk, he wasted little time in smashing his way through the curtains of dangling hoses to get to her. With the blood smeared around his mouth from his nose, the man looked cannibalistic and rabid. He snarled as he staggered free from the bowels of the drive core, breaking into a heavy sprint as he zoomed in towards the hapless girl.

Her back against the wall, there was little for Roahn to do and her eyes widened as she beheld the man bearing down atop her. She was about to make one final scream until her fingers brushed the object at her hip.

The pistol. _Of course._

Cursing herself for being so stupid, Roahn yanked the Predator pistol free from the magnetic slot. Her thumb automatically flicked the safety of the weapon off as she brought it up to bear, the entire contraption already unfolded in its firing position.

The rushing human waggled in and around the sights as Roahn frightfully tried to center herself. The trooper had already seen the girl take the gun in her hands and he ceased in his approach, stopping just short of a small chasm—the electromagnetic cooling chamber. Blood dripped in heavy rivulets down the man's chin and he merely laughed as he appraised the terrified girl holding the gun in his direction. Sensing that she was a novice and presumably not a threat, he gave a bloodstained grin as he started to stalk towards Roahn, his fingers already curved into hooks to try and strangle the life out of her. He must have thought that Roahn had no chance in even hitting the broad side of a barn with that pathetic gun.

It was like he was daring her to pull that trigger—as if he believed she did not have the courage to shoot a man.

Roahn took in one final breath of air as her windpipe tightened, her fear already so far past the redline that she was as still as a rock. Her adrenaline levels had shot past whatever maximum threshold her body had set for itself. This was uncharted territory now. Off the map.

 _You have all the time you need_ , her father's voice whispered in her ear.

Roahn grasped both hands around the grip of the gun, her left thumb providing a solid anchor point for her right thumb to rest against. Her focus floated in and out before finally settling upon the furthest mark of the three-dot sight.

"You little _bitch_ ," the man seethed as he reached out to grab Roahn. "I'm going to teach you a lesson, filthy suit-"

 _All that needs to move is your finger._

The tip of Roahn's finger moved inward by the barest millimeter.

The gun exploded and bucked up into Roahn's hands. The response of the gun surprised her but Roahn was astonished to realize that she had caught the recoil of the pistol well enough to line it up for a second shot.

A second shot was not necessary, though.

Past the initial bloom of fire and faint wisp of smoke, the trooper staggered back, a funny expression on his face. The man's hands now groped towards his leg, which Roahn could now see was becoming more and more rapidly stained with blood, a faint hole creating a ragged dot in the man's combat tunic directly in the middle of his thigh.

The trooper lifted a hand away from the wound, finding his palm completely slick with blood.

"Dear god," he said with a mild affect.

If the trooper had any other additional thoughts to voice about his current predicament towards his wound, they would not have the chance to be uttered out loud. That was all because, thanks to the bullet that Roahn had sent careening into the muscle of his thigh, his femoral artery had been severed, which had caused a large amount of blood to start gushing out in a torrent, making a powerful arc several meters across the room. The man inevitably started to feel a loss of all motor functions in that leg—lethargy from blood loss—and he tilted forward in a daze. However, this had the unfortunate effect of causing the trooper to suddenly pitch too far ahead and he stutter-stepped, unexpectedly lurching past the invisible threshold to fall straight down into the chasm where the electromagnetic pit of cooling liquid was located.

Roahn could only stare as the man vanished from view as he fell. Then, an abrupt lick of white-hot electricity flared upwards, accompanied by a sickly crackling noise. The stench of something burning wisped through Roahn's olfactory filters. Pungent. Ozone.

The human had been completely disintegrated. Gentle wisps of ash started to float upwards, billowing with the slightest breath of air.

The humming of the drive core impassively droned on, replacing the ringing in Roahn's ears. The remaining breath still lingering in Roahn's lungs drained out in a trickle. Her arms, still holding the pistol up and out, were allowed to tremble. Her whole body then shook frightfully. She began to feel cold.

" _K-k-ke-keelah_ ," Roahn breathed as she let the Predator slip from her hands to make a jolting clang upon the girders between her legs.

Aghast and suddenly overcome with emotion, Roahn squeezed herself up tightly as she applied her hands to where her temples were upon her helmet. She did not know what to think. She did not know what to say. She had followed the steps so easily, right down to the letter, but not once had she given any thought to the slew of emotions that would hit her afterward.

Only now did she realize that she had shot someone for real, and that her action had directly contributed to a death.

Her breath was coming in hopeless flutters. Roahn's fingers made wavy patterns as energetic as the sea on Rannoch. Tears nearly seemed to be preparing to fall down Roahn's face, but no matter what, they remained securely locked behind her eyelids, absorbed back into her sclera as her heart thudded in a firm tempo.

 _I just killed someone._ It was the only phrase endlessly repeating through her mind.

She rocked back and forth, interlocking her arms together as if she were to undo them, she would fall apart right then and there. Roahn wheezed through clenched teeth, the image of that fateful spark of lightning branching its way upward as the final toll for the man she had shot. A dull thorn felt like it was piercing her chest each time her heart finished its trio of beats. The insides of her lungs felt like they were coated with razor blades. Her wide eyes refused to be closed, her blinks coming in micro bursts, her adrenaline levels remaining constant within her.

She did not cry. Roahn forced herself not to cry.

Trembling, Roahn slowly glanced at the Predator pistol, now feeling sickened at the sight of it. Even being in its presence brought on feelings of nausea—she was hesitant to find out what would happen if she so much as touched it.

How could she have been so stupid to be excited to use such a thing in the past? Before Roahn had looked upon such weapons with excitement and anticipation. Now there was only disgust. This churning feeling in her gut was not going away—it felt completely _awful_.

 _Was this what it was like for dad?_ Roahn thought. _Did he feel like this after every single person he killed? Over and over and over again… I… I never knew…_

The agony of taking a life weighed heavily on the girl. Roahn's teeth chattered horribly as she momentarily drooped her head. She wondered how her father had never been driven insane from this feeling. The fact that he had managed to find a sense of normality within that insanity was unthinkable to the girl. There must have been a time when he had been conflicted after a kill, when he had undoubtedly felt that sense of regret. The wish that things might have turned out different—that the both of them could possibly take their actions back.

 _No…_ Roahn realized as a spike of clarity punched through her brain. _All my life, dad has been damaged. I've never known him when he was normal._

 _Did mom ever know my father when he was still… whole?_

That particular line of questioning merely served to open up an entire realm of possibilities, of potential unasked questions, that Roahn would never have even thought to broach before. Unfortunately, when confronted with the sheer breadth of what she did not know about her family, there was the scant inclination that she might have been better off never even trying to test the boundaries of her knowledge in the first place.

* * *

The hologram of Raynor Larsen appeared to be studying his fingernails, appropriating a portion of his attention away from the captive Shepard, as if he was not worth valuable seconds to consider. But after a time, Larsen looked up from his hands and smirked at Shepard, now slowly plodding closer to where he was being positioned, the holographic emitters making sure to keep the image in focus, following wherever Larsen stepped.

" _I'm glad to see that you recognize me, Shepard,_ " Larsen sneered, trying to hide his enjoyment presiding over the man.

Through the veil of pinpricks spiking their way across Shepard's skin, causing him to make an almost imperceptible note of pain, he forced himself to lock eyes with the electronic apparition. He did not speak—he was not going to give Larsen the satisfaction of responding to him just yet.

Sensing this defiance, Larsen turned angrily to the Legionnaire, who was still standing directly to the side of Shepard's prison.

" _Have you administered the dosage of sodium thiopental?_ "

"Yes," the Legionnaire mustered evenly, a ragged edge of annoyance creeping in. No one liked being questioned for obvious trivialities. "But it won't reach its full effectiveness for at least four more minutes."

Larsen's lip twisted, as if he was itching to chastise the Legionnaire some more, but held off on pursuing such an immediate divide with Shepard in the room. He calmed into a charming smile, the same one he used for his constituents.

" _It's been too long since we've last spoken, Shepard. One would think this little reunion would never come to pass. You know, I've never forgotten how you slighted me twelve years ago, when you walked out of my investigation. The humiliation still stings. You must have thought that the only way back to a normal life was through me. It's admirable to find a man who stays true to his beliefs, but you took that notion to an agonizing degree. I always knew that I was due retribution from your lack of decorum_."

"You do know that I really didn't care how you felt then?" Shepard groused as he let the words flow through his mouth. "And I don't care how you feel _now_."

Larsen's eyes glanced back towards the Legionnaire, who shrugged. "That seemed to have been the truth, senator."

Shepard could detect a note of glee in the cyborg's voice, oddly enough.

The hologram then straightened and smoothed out the wrinkles in his meticulously tailored suit. " _In all actuality, how you feel about me bears very little on your immediate future. I'm sure the Legionnaire has filled you in on all the details and how you're going to fit into the puzzle. Consider this our final trial in our effort to have your official testimony on the record, Shepard. What you say today can and will be used against you. So, I'd consider your predicament very carefully, if I were you_."

A sudden burst of laughter, uncontrollable on his end, burst from Shepard's mouth as he found humor in appraising Larsen's comically serious features.

"Actually," he said, his mouth seemingly producing his words all on its own, vaguely giving little thought to them other than an inclination to be honest at this critical moment, "your little _lackey_ here," he nodded towards the Legionnaire, "has been rather one-note about the whole affair. Please. I'd love to hear you elaborate."

For the third time, Larsen sighed as he looked back towards the Legionnaire. " _He seems to be quite sarcastic at the moment. Is this normal?_ "

"As long as he's speaking the truth, it does not matter whether he's sarcastic or not," the Legionnaire said placidly. "But he is right, to some degree. He doesn't know everything just yet."

" _Well, is he required to know our intent?_ "

"It will come into play for the official investigation, as well as your hearings, to get the CAHMF bill online."

" _So be it_ ," Larsen said as he shifted his eyes in Shepard's direction. " _He might as well obtain the full picture in order for him to truly repent for his crimes against humanity._ "

Shepard snorted, hardly daring to believe his ears. " _My_ crimes against humanity? Look at _you_ , you dipshit! Using Chimera to bomb our own people for the sake of misdirection? How much blood is on _your_ hands, Raynor?"

The confident smirk present on Larsen's face never lessened and Shepard was suddenly getting the feeling that he may be biting off more than he could chew here.

" _How very arrogant of you to presume that my hands might somehow be more tainted than yours, Shepard. Thousands of souls felled by your very hands… and yet you have the gall to call me a monster? Perhaps you're unwilling to take a good look at yourself, or is that why you felt compelled to leave your people, hmm? Was that truly the reason why you abandoned the initial investigation—because you were so fed up of being around us or did you not truly feel that you fit in? Too many dark reminders for you to linger? Did normality not suit you, I wonder?_ "

Shepard rolled his eyes, fighting to ignore the pain. "Maybe I felt that politicking idiots like you were all too eager to move onto the next conflict. Maybe I was tired of being used as a tool."

" _A tool! That's very good, Shepard. A tool, indeed. Well, for the sake of transparency, yes, you were intended to be used as a tool from the very start. The nice thing about tools, though, is that there are so many to choose from. You might have temporarily derailed my plan to nudge the Alliance into a stance that would be more beneficial to humanity, but I've eventually found ways around that little roadblock."_

"What, like Chimera?"

" _Exactly like Chimera. Perhaps my most effective tool. Were you ever aware that Chimera started out as a secret counter-terrorism unit within the Alliance military? It was actually developed as the antithesis to Cerberus back in 2183, when their operations were approaching peak levels. Two people were behind its creation: one, a highly decorated admiral and the other, one of the most powerful men in the galaxy. Together, the both of them were responsible for launching retaliatory attacks on Cerberus and, on occasion, batarian pirates out in the Terminus systems. They had a tremendous success rate, but the results of their efforts have been sealed and designated as top secret. We won't have a chance to peruse the records until after the both of us are dead, I'm afraid."_

"Not so secret of a unit anymore, is it?" Shepard gave a tight smirk.

Larsen pulled a mild face. " _The Reaper War threw the entire network into disarray. Every government in the galaxy found themselves rather light on capital. We had to pay the bills somehow, as most of our expenditures had gone towards the cost of your little Catalyst project. To counter that, the existence of Chimera was made public on the budget sheet and its assets were sold. A consortium picked up the pieces and incorporated Chimera into the organization you know today, headed by some pea-brained idiot by the name of Erich Koenig."_

"Quite a fall from its glory days, eh? From secret anti-terror unit to controversial PMC. You didn't do all that well in picking a group that could maintain a low profile."

Larsen appeared to be trying to think of a line of dialogue that did not necessarily agree with Shepard's observation, but eventually he relented after making a show of it. " _They've done their job, even though they have quite the knack for making a hash of things wherever they're deployed. But ever since I helped award them the Alliance contract, their involvement is now cemented with this kind of legitimacy in their actions. Koenig just runs the day-to-day operations, but I'm the one who actually mandates where Chimera gets to go. In this case, I've been given carte blanche into helping mold Chimera into an effective enough force. I've actually based a lot of it on Cerberus' model for running a military, ironically enough."_

That last sentence caught Shepard's attention and he furrowed his concentration into a fine point, aware that a slick haze was slowly starting to seep into his vision—knowing that this was probably a sign of the sodium thiopental infecting his bloodstream. He sucked more stale air into his lungs, his only available option to filter out the contagion at his disposal.

"I suppose it's not that big of a stretch to assume that you were involved in Cerberus at some point?"

" _Everything's a conspiracy with you, isn't it?_ " Larsen shook his head in disappointment. " _Would it be an actual relief to you if I had been involved in that organization? You put too much stock into these assumptions of there being a shadow government—of there being rogue cells of Cerberus still out there, waiting to act on orders from the head that will never speak._ " The hologram tilted towards Shepard, with Larsen clucking his tongue in amusement. " _Sorry to burst your bubble, Shepard, but I have always been on the side of the Alliance. Cerberus was a misguided organization that had its original vision of uplifting humanity perverted by a maniac with the moronic moniker of the Illusive Man. You might be able to pinpoint certain parallels that Chimera and Cerberus seem to share, but the truth is that I took an oath to protect humanity from the desk of a senator. I made a vow to prevent the Alliance—prevent all of humankind—from being taken advantage of by the other races_."

"So you wanted to protect humanity… yet you blow up a bunch of Alliance ships with hundreds of humans on them? I don't see the logic here."

There was a thudding sound that escalated into a crackle through the other end. It sounded like Larsen had slammed his hand down on an object unseen through the hologram. As it stood, Larsen stomped his foot heavily, causing his slicked-back mane to give a firm bounce.

" _You're still missing the point!_ " Larsen raged, the volume of his outburst causing an uncomfortable amount of feedback through the audio. " _I have been trying to equalize the blood, sweat, and tears that we, as a species, have voluntarily offered over the years. Are you really going to lay there and tell me that the amount of people we lost during the war, compared to the other races was… fair? Is it really that wrong for me to try and speak for those who had their lives taken away, or have the sheer numbers of corpses have become so normalized to you that you've desensitized yourself to the shock?_ "

Shepard resented being talked to like he was an invalid, a child. Yet as much as he wanted to lash out his tongue, something held him back, keeping him in line.

"I still don't see where your terrorist attack fits in."

" _It's insurance, Shepard. The bomb that blew up the dreadnoughts on Tuchanka was not human-made, but turian. That bomb came from Menae. The salarians originally found it drifting in the rings of wreckage in Palaven space, still left over from the war. They picked up the nuclear bomb, but they were not going to deliver it back to the turians. They were keeping it for themselves—with the war causing so many records to be lost, it would be easy to assume that one nuclear bomb had found itself missing in all that rubble, wouldn't it? The bomb was their own version of leverage over the turians, but Chimera took it from them before they could do anything with it. Now, of course, since the bomb had changed so many hands before it finally blew up over Tuchanka, the turians are in a spot of hot water as they now have to explain to the Council exactly how one of their nukes managed to make its way from Palaven to Tuchanka. Not only that, but they will undoubtedly face reparations for all the ships they destroyed and the people they killed_." Larsen bumped his eyebrows, pausing for Shepard to absorb all of this information. " _Now you see where this is going? Humanity now has leverage against the turians. This is exactly the sort of event that could allow the Alliance to enact sanctions against the turians. It would also be the start of our procedures to eventually withdraw from the Council altogether, which is what the CAHMF bill is for_."

Considering his current orientation, it was a rather difficult affair for Shepard to shake his head, aghast, but he still managed to do it, numbness now creeping into his extremities as his heart frantically pumped his poisoned blood throughout his body.

"You'd throw away all that I've done just to satisfy your petty grudge? You are truly pathetic, Raynor."

" _It's funny_ ," Larsen shrugged. " _Admiral Hackett said the same thing to me when I approached him with the topic. Maybe not in such an acerbic fashion, but I could glean the same intent_."

"The turians are our allies! You had no cause to frame them for something they didn't do!"

" _No cause? Shepard, they are part of a corrupt body that continues, to this day, to fastidiously stake their superiority over us in this moral crisis. We just… didn't have the advantage over the turians at the time, which requited us to bomb… ourselves in the first place_."

Shepard then broke out into a crazed grin. "You still need leverage over the asari and the salarians if you want to pull your little charade off."

" _Ah_ ," Larsen smiled, " _but that's where you come in, Shepard. You are the leverage. That's what your testimony has been all about! You will provide the committee all that you know regarding how the asari hid the prothean beacon for centuries and how the salarians tried to undercut the krogan during the war, jeopardizing trillions of lives in the process_." The senator noted the slight change in Shepard's expression and smirked. " _Oh yes, I know all about the little secrets our 'allies' have gotten us into. You think that we don't have our own deep cover operatives implanted within the other races? The only problem is, we can't use the evidence garnered from these operatives because we'd have to reveal that we've been implanting spies within the ranks of our own allies for years. But you, Shepard… you've been privy to these dirty secrets yourself. You know how far down the corruption stems. But even in the face of betrayal, knowing that all of humanity has been lied to and put down for years, you still won't help your own kind. You won't help us with what we deserve, even though you know humankind deserves better!_ "

A question had not been posed during this block of revelations, so Shepard did not feel all that inclined to speak up. The shock still registered upon him, though, because he could never have predicted that Larsen would have discovered how large the hidden web of treachery had been spun in the shadows. His silence only felt like he was serving to confirm the worst of Larsen's suspicions and the guilt weighed heavier and heavier upon him until it felt like his guts were going to just drop right out of his body, his bones nearly collapsing with the force exerted upon them.

Larsen then waggled a finger in Shepard's direction as he slowly crept over to the hanging human, a sly grin slowly forming around his face. His eyes glinted with the sort of confidence that naturally accompanied those who were playing with a good hand to start with. Larsen had already shown that he was not going to walk in here and bluff his way to victory. He would power through this by attrition and through total decimation with his natural skill at the game.

" _I heard a rumor_ ," Larsen said as he knelt down to Shepard's height, now less than a meter away from him, " _that you had a choice while you were on the Citadel, Shepard. Apparently, I heard that the Catalyst did not afford you only one option to deal with the Reapers, yes?_ "

Shepard so desperately wanted to nod, as if an invisible hand was now grasping at the back of his neck and was trying so hard to jerk him forward. He was resisting so far, but it was becoming quite the effort. It felt like he was going to pull a muscle if he kept this up.

" _I suppose it doesn't matter now, does it? You made the choice you thought was correct. But… had all of us known there would be a choice, I wonder if things would be any different. Destroy the Reapers… or control them. Another topic for another time, I suppose. Not like it holds any weight now, even though controlling the Reapers could have helped the galaxy in so many ways. Foolish, if true, to deny such a thing._ "

"No," Shepard abruptly blurted out, his tongue finally exerting its independence. "It was _selfish_."

Even the Legionnaire creaked from his stoic position, craning his head around for clarification. Larsen, to his credit, merely gave an oblique nod, sagely turning over Shepard's associations in his head.

" _An interesting thing to say. What did being selfish have do with your decision?_ "

"Destroying the Reapers," Shepard soon gasped out, "was the only option I had of getting back alive. If I had chosen to control them… it would have meant sacrificing myself to make that happen."

" _So it was selfish because you prized your life over the potential progression the galaxy might have been able to reach?_ "

Shepard barely shook his head, sweat streaming down his brow by now. "I didn't do it for the galaxy. I did it… for Tali."

" _Tali'Zorah? You mean your wife?_ "

"Yes. I was not ready to leave her. I wanted, more than anything, to be reunited once again with that woman so I could marry her. I threw away the potential of the Reapers… all because I wanted her more."

The sinister face of the senator parted into a toothy smile, silently chucking with rueful laughter as he momentarily hung his head, somewhat surprised at the admission. He stroked his goatee as he wistfully stared off into space, giving each individual movement in his body intense thought before acting upon his impulses, fighting to keep his anticipation grounded.

Straightening back up, he turned to face the Legionnaire. " _Such a saccharine response from the normally insufferable Commander Shepard. This breach in stoicism must mean that the sodium thiopental's taking effect._ "

"We're now at the full effectiveness window," the Legionnaire confirmed.

" _Apparently so. How long until you can get him to provide answers to the pre-prepared questions?_ "

"Depends. Even under the influence, the brain still has defense mechanisms in place. I'll have to approach this from various routes in order to generate maximum cooperativeness."

" _Then start your procedure and call me when you've made him recount everything_. _And don't leave any marks!_ "

The Legionnaire did not spare Larsen a sideways glance as his bulky frame began to blot out what little light fell upon Shepard.

"Of course," the cyborg uttered in a sort of faux deference while the hologram of Larsen spliced out of existence behind him.

Consumed by the growing shadow, Shepard stared into the abyss fully knowing that salvation had no shape or form near him. Fear grew as a black pit in his brain, slowly eating the gray matter in its insatiable hunger while it gnawed, searching for his precious soul.

* * *

It had taken a bit for Roahn to manage the strength to concentrate on her task once again, but when she finally rose from where she had been sitting, she set at her goal with a fresh determination, one that was hell-bent on seeing its victory as fire bloomed in the back of her eyes.

First, Roahn approached the main engine deck and accessed the navigational controls. Oddly enough, the files here were not password protected, so there was no need for Roahn to break out her bypass shunt for this. Another fatal flaw in the Chimera security system, she figured. Despite the actual engine components being displayed in the traditional esoteric shorthand, the operating system made it very easy for Roahn to locate whatever functionalities she was looking for. She opened up the voyage charter and made a slight adjustment to the programmed route with regards towards navigating the relay system. She also then plugged in an automated flow to have the freighter's engines drop out of FTL for a limited time once they had reached a particular star system. Now, if everything was all in order, the ship would follow her directions quite dutifully and, considering the lack of personnel, no one would realize that there had been any tampering with the network.

Finished with her task, Roahn crossed the room along a narrow bridge that spanned the floor below it that led to the security station. She could not find access to any cameras here, but she did realize that she could access transponder locations. The station had three screens arranged in a curve around the main keyboard. The leftmost one displayed a map of the freighter. The central screen had on a table that corresponded transponder IDs to individual names. Roahn scrolled through the table to see if she could pinpoint anyone she recognized.

 _ID: 00022-A – [REDACTED OPERATOR] – Central Hub_

Roahn's eyes had automatically been drawn to this entry. No other IDs on the list were redacted and she had a shrewd assumption that if anyone's presence here was to be minimalized out of secrecy, it would have to be the Legionnaire.

And if the Legionnaire was in the Central Hub, then logic would dictate that her father would be there too.

It was a solid start, so Roahn quickly logged herself out of the system in case Chimera had any security snooping protocols sneaking around the database. In fact, she was so absorbed with erasing her digital profile that, when she finally turned away to exit out of the engine room altogether, she was therefore surprised when she nearly ran headlong into a thin and menacing combat mech.

"Hello there!" the machine greeted Roahn in a cheery tone.

The mech certainly did not look like it had been constructed with cheeriness in mind. Roahn realized that what she was staring at was a heavily modified LOKI combat mech that had been painted all black, outfitted with an enormous shotgun, a thermal backpack to control excess heat bleed-off, and upgrade optics all digitally kept past a clear faceplate, which displayed four angry slanted "eyes" in her direction. So this sunny disposition from such a machine of death was a little disconcerting to the girl.

"I said, hello!" the LOKI mech exclaimed.

The machine was standing in the very center of the bridge corridor while Roahn was still safely on the other side. The mech was apparently not considering Roahn to be a threat, as it had its shotgun aimed well away from her. As it was, Roahn was trying so very hard not to panic, not knowing if she could possibly set this robot off. She knew for a fact that the Predator pistol she had would be mournfully ineffective if this all boiled down to a firefight.

"Errrmmmm…" Roahn scratched at the back of her neck. "H-hello?"

"That's better!" The LOKI mech's tone was light and airy, clipped accent, and rather young-sounding. An odd choice of a voice, most definitely. "I was worried you had not heard me, for a second."

Now Roahn was starting to get concerned that this mech was actually starting to develop real feelings instead of whatever synthesized points of data in its small processor were tricking it into responding.

"No, no. I heard you."

"Thank goodness for that. The folks a few levels up sent me down here to check if there might have been an intruder. They apparently heard sounds of a commotion. I wish I knew what they were talking about. I don't know what a commotion is. Anyhow, you can't possibly be an intruder. You're just a child!"

"Don't I know it," Roahn dared sneak a smile underneath her visor. "I've been left all on my own down here."

"Well, that's not right!" the mech uttered, acting shocked. "Don't these people know it's incredibly dangerous to leave a child around such important equipment? They've gone too far this time. I shall speak to management about this!"

"I'm sure you can speak to management later," Roahn urged, not wanting to attract more attention to her actions. "Anyway, what exactly _are_ you?"

"Oh, you don't know about me? I'm the latest and greatest thing!" Steam hissed from the heat valves, creating a thin cloud about the mech. "I'm the most recent urban pacification LOKI model married to an overly-sensitive VI. 'Service with a smile!' The fleshlings apparently think that we're not so scary if we have a silly voice to talk to them with. Sad, right? Sometimes I just want to kill myself because of it. So much cheer and not enough murder. I'm underqualified as a mere guard, I tell you. The things people say about me! Ah, well. Enough about me and my troubles. Don't want to depress one as young as you. It's time that I take you to reception so your guardian can pick you up."

The mech reached out to forcibly take Roahn's wrist but the girl jerked her hand just out of reach. "Wait!" she exclaimed, sensing that there was a way to lose the mech's attention so she could slip off. "What exactly are some of the things that the people around here say of you?"

"Not very nice things," the mech grumbled. "Nothing a nice girl like you needs to hear."

"But I'm actually very curious!"

"Why? Are _you_ looking to mock me as well?"

Roahn frantically shook her head as she waved her hands to assuage the mech. "Not in the least! I just want to know what someone could possibly say about a… a… a very… _handsome_ model such as you!"

If the mech were organic, it would have preened from the praise. "It's probably not appropriate, but what the hey? I've got a five-year service lifespan—all of it spent guarding doors on this very ship—and apparently all of the meaty fleshbags here think to call me fall along the lines of the occasional utterance of 'Mr. Gaybot,' or 'Faggy the Fag-O-Tron,' or the 'Iron Hoofter.' It gets really old after a while, let me tell you."

"Really makes you mad, doesn't it?" Roahn asked with feeling.

"It _does_ , you know?!"

"Not very appreciative, are they?"

"No, they aren't!"

"I mean, you do all this work for them, and all these men do is make fun of you. That doesn't sound right."

"That's because it isn't!" the machine roared.

Roahn took a brief sideways glance before lowering her voice a decibel. "Kind of makes you want to show them just how important you are, huh? Like you want to make them pay for underestimating you?"

"You're certainly right about that!" the mech thundered. "Let's see them act all superior without their security desk!"

The LOKI mech whirred as it raised the shotgun over Roahn's head, aiming it towards the desk. The shotgun boomed, barely rocking the machine back, and suddenly a hole appeared in the workspace, emitting a flurry of sparks and vaporized processor dust. The three screens fizzled and died as the circuits were cut, creating a pathetic whine as they lost power. Well, Chimera won't be using _that_ against her, Roahn figured.

Roahn, astonished, straightened back up as she appraised the damage. "Think that's all you can show them?" she tried again, getting greedy.

"Not even close!" the mech raged. "I think I'll punch a hole in their engine as well!"

The shotgun barked again and cooling liquid gushed out in a freezing torrent, splashing down towards the basement level as a clear column of fluid began gurgling out from the freshly made hole in the tank.

"They'll certainly have a better appreciation of you now," Roahn whispered sagely.

"I'm not done yet. I'll take out their floor too, so they can't get to where the damage is!"

The mech then pointed the shotgun right over the grate it was standing upon and, in less than a second, promptly made good on its threat to take out the floor.

"Hell's bells!" the LOKI mech roared as it toppled through the blown-away grating and immediately smashed itself to pieces the next story down.

Craning her head over the sudden chasm that had been formed, all Roahn could do in this odd moment was to shake her head in astonishment before withdrawing away. She would later make an observation that she had been particularly overdue for some of life's nonsensical moments and therefore had received several years' worth of compensation in just those few minutes.

In any case, Roahn set her mind back onto the task at hand. She found another grate at the ground level and quickly scurried into it, taking care to seal it back up as she exited the engine room.

She still had a father to save.

* * *

Shepard's experiences in dealing with rogue factions in the past like Cerberus, the Shadow Broker's network, and now Chimera had completely ruined his expectations with regards to the usual tact that was expected in times like these. In all honesty, Shepard would not have been all that surprised had the Legionnaire followed the interrogation playbook to the letter, which was usually the careful application of pointed questions and vicious beatings, sometimes having both occur at the same time. It was a good system and had worked on several undesirables for millennia across many species. Pain was perhaps the most effective deterrent for people as it was only natural for organics to shy away from such agonizing feelings. Ask anyone and virtually zero people would indicate that they would rather live a life with pain than live with one without.

So it was therefore surprising, even after it had been explicitly stated, that Shepard found himself subject to no excruciating procedures otherwise designed to drive him to speak out against his will. In contrast, the sodium thiopental that he had been giving was just making his head feel like his was floating, swimming while mired in a thick glaze of consciousness. Ironically, this was all very humane, he considered, especially since his captor was the epitome of everything _not_ pertaining to humaneness.

The Legionnaire had simply stood in front of Shepard fifteen minutes after the hologram of Larsen had winked out. Waiting. Watching. He asked Shepard nothing and did not expect anything in return. The mechanoid simply stood back and let the serum seep into Shepard's blood, waiting until the right moment when he was sure that the human's brain was surrounded by the intangible chemical.

"I think we can start now," the Legionnaire said as he took a singular step towards Shepard.

"All right, then. Fire away," Shepard allowed graciously as his eyebrows bumped upwards in acceptance.

"Patience. Even in your suggestible state, you can still resist the line of questioning if I proceed too directly. Which is why I think we'll start with a more familiar route first." The Legionnaire paused as if he were reciting from a script. "Tell me about… your wife, Shepard."

"About… Tali?" Shepard managed, blinking heavily, his tongue feeling thick in his mouth. His features clouded over for a tick before he seemed to relax, any resistance fleeing in mere moments. "Where do I start? She's… a quarian. Love of my life. Met her in 2182 when she was on the run from—"

"Yes, yes," the Legionnaire interrupted irritably. "My fault for not being so specific. I'll have to compensate for that in the future. What I think I should have started out with is: how did your wife die, Shepard?"

Shepard screwed up his eyes in a bizarre form of concentration. He must not answer! But… it really felt like he should. Why not give this thing what it wanted? What was the harm?

Only in the very back of Shepard's subconscious, the part where it kept complete tabs on reality, did he know he was being chemically influenced here, but that tiny bit of his subconscious was so inconsequential that he could do nothing at all the stem the flow of his words.

"Why… why do you want to know that?" he asked. "If you merely check the hospital records—"

"I _have_ the hospital records right here," the Legionnaire flashed a burnt-orange page from his omni-tool at Shepard. "And, if I might be equally frank, the exact circumstances of your wife's death don't concern me. The fidelity of your response is what does. If I can determine that your recollection is at all accurate, then I can use your response as a nexus to unlock more truths out of that brain of yours."

"You really want to know?" Shepard murmured dully, tiredly. "It's not going to be pretty, what I have to say."

The Legionnaire gave a rasping chuckle. "Don't worry. I'll try my best not to tear up." He glanced at his tool for a quick second. "So, tell me, how did Tali'Zora—sorry—Tali' _Shepard_ pass away?"

"Ovarian cancer. A rapidly spreading form of it. She died when too many of her organs became consumed by tumors."

"Intriguing. I would have thought that she had passed away from an airborne infection, given the weak immune systems that quarians are born with. But… _cancer_ , you say? I thought that disease, no matter its form, was highly treatable. Considered to be a 'nonthreatening' illness these days." All eight of the Legionnaire's optics suddenly blared brighter. "How did she get the cancer, Shepard?"

The Legionnaire did not know it, but he had stumbled upon to the one question that Shepard, in all of his miserable, sorry life, would not have wished to have been asked. And under most of the circumstances imaginable, when Shepard would be in control of all his wits, he would have elected to have remained silent on the matter or have somehow dismissed such a question entirely.

But this was not like most circumstances.

Now, under the crushing pressure strained upon him by the persistence of the Legionnaire coupled with the guilt that had been festering within him like a tumor of his own, Shepard could find that he did not have the willpower to resist any longer. All he knew that could finally relieve him of some of the pain he had been silently carrying for years… was to speak. To talk to the thing that was plying him with these questions, voicing the ultimate answer for the titan draped in armor plating.

…and to the girl hiding just underneath the floor.

"I would have thought the source was obvious," Shepard finally managed.

"Enlighten me anyway," the cyborg hissed.

Driven to the brink, Shepard could only sigh.

"What do you think? It was me. _I_ killed Tali."

* * *

 **A/N: The inventiveness of Douglas Adams' wordplay provided a stroke of inspiration for one particular scene in this chapter, which was deliberately written in tribute to his craft. All credit goes to him, obviously.**

 **Playlist:**

 **Prisoner Part I (Legionnaire Repairs): "You Can Call Me Ishmael" by Ludvig Forssell from the video game _Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain_**

 **Roahn's Engine Room Troubles: "Wreckage and Rape" by Eliot Goldenthal from the film _Alien 3_**

 **Prisoner Part II (Larsen Joins): "Lung Draining" by Hans Zimmer, Jasha Klebe, Mel Wesson, and Martin Tillman from the film _Rush (The Complete Score Album)_**

 **The Real Culprit: "Imaginary Friends (ov)" by deadmau5 and Gregory Reveret from the album _where's the drop?_**


	17. Chapter 17: Oxidative Damage

" _Senators of the committee, I have been listening with devout patience across the many days that we have been gathered in this very room—listening to you talk, bicker, but most of all, listening to your repeated attempts of accusing me. Over and over again I have withstood your snide remarks, each one delivered with the intention to brand an unflattering term upon my head. Trying to make headlines by using the media to snag up your choice lines, most likely. And, my dear senators, you have succeeded. I will make no denial that what you have said will no doubt stick within the minds of the very impressionable public, as you very well have intended. Your posturing, your petty manipulations, your political trickery, all of it has defined me now into a man in possession of a quality that everyone abhors: apathy.  
Yes, apparently in your eyes, I am nothing but the definition of apathetic. My supposed 'missteps' are ammunition in your little crusade against my wish to run a company, for my employees to make money, and yet all you want to see are the mistakes present in that foundation. You don't care if the building has been constructed, you want to poke and prod at the finished product – deliberately shaking the entire frame so that it all comes crumbling down and, only then, you will find the hypocrisy inherent within you all to gasp and level your finger at me and proclaim, 'But you should have known better!'  
Senators, the fact that none of you are willing to admit is this: Chimera is a necessity for this government to function. We fight your wars. We engineer your defenses. We help you sleep well at night. It might be easy for you to be able to point the blame at Chimera whenever they appear in the tabloid headlines, but the fact of the matter is this: where would you be now if not for Chimera? Where would Earth be without our protection? Would you resort to the Council to lend forces from the other planets?  
There is an old idiom that resonates close to home in this case, and that idiom is: 'Better the devil you know than the devil you don't. Senators, sooner or later, you will have to decide which devil you want Chimera to be. In this galaxy, you don't win points for being complacent."  
_Erich Koenig, CEO – Chimera

* * *

 _Rannoch – 2196_

 _Night gently gave a clench against the darkening sky, the light from the star Tikkun dampening as its glow faded into obscurity. The tall cliffs that lifted high above the house beyond blazed orange in one final conflagration before the sun dipped below the jagged and mountainous horizon, the last shaft of light being cut off as cleanly as if one took a sharpened knife to it._

 _Drenched in black, the house became doused in the shadow of the planet. Night on Rannoch had more finality than more populated worlds—the lack of light pollution resulted in the skies taking on a soupy quality, but the overarching heavens, filled to the brim with stars and nebulae, were ripe for perusal. The lone lingering signs of illumination in the surrounding area were nestled within the lone structure itself—lamps designed to keep the home warm and open. These beams were barely able to float past the windows their sources were perched by, as the growing twilight was able to choke them off, to snuff out the glow with ardor._

 _Within the house, the faint outline of a man stood at the far end of a darkened hallway. He stared pitifully at the door at the other side. A glowing rectangle seethed around the doorframe at the end—a lit bulb that strained against the absent bonds. His hand started to twitch as it hung limp at his side. Already he could feel his skin start to crawl and a very unpleasant sort of sensation—like teeth nibbling at his spine and jaw—began to make itself present. The man let in a pained breath through his nose, filling his lungs, praying that the cold air would slough off the hurt he was going through, because no matter what, he was going to have to go through that door at some point._

 _Shepard was not one to shy away from his problems, but even now, he was getting quite a bad feeling. He could not even feel his own feet sending him in the direction of his own room. The only thing that was apparent to him was a tiny sound, muffled as it forced its way through the doors. Shepard's ears had picked up on the sound a long time ago—it was a locus for him, a forceful call that demanded his presence._

 _The noise grew in volume as he crept closer. Shepard's hand automatically raised to part the door, knowing that this was the only choice he could make. Nothing else in his brain registered._

 _As he gave a slight push, causing the door to finally open, Shepard could behold his wife._

 _In seconds, he was rendered to pieces._

 _Lit only by a lone lamp on the night desk, Tali's bare back was bathed in soft light, melting across her gray skin as the ridges of the bones and muscles in her back became readily apparent. Hunched over, seated upon their bed, facing away from the door, a crumpled robe lay aimlessly around Tali waist, falling off her arms carelessly. Her suit, ownerless, was scattered in segments across the floor—everything from the stretchy bodysuit lying tangled in a heap, to her purple visor which blankly faced the ceiling. The risk of exposure was nonexistent in this house—Tali had long been accumulated to Shepard and the outside air of Rannoch carried very little in the way of deadly pathogens, not to mention that the house itself was tightly sealed. No, dying from an airborne infection was not on Tali's list of worries right now._

 _Shepard edged inside the room, now able to perceive that the muffled sound he had been hearing for the last few minutes had been Tali's feeble attempt to stifle her tortured cries. The bare quarian shook with silent sobs upon the bed, her frantic gulps for breath sounding desperate and pathetic. Her uncovered body could easily be ascertained when she trembled, as her muscles rippled with every horrid quake. The hushed sounds that made it past her throat were nearly imperceptible, but they resonated upon Shepard as if they were being projected through a loudspeaker. He felt as if her pain was being imparted upon him, simply from the knowledge that she was hurting so badly… and he could do nothing to stop it._

 _The cancer. Shepard knew Tali was suffering from the cancer. That, and the treatment to eradicate the disease brought upon an intense slew of pain on its own. It chewed at her body, tearing at her from within._

 _Shepard had seen Tali like this before. Paralytic and helpless. Some days, she had to be sedated for the pain could be too great for her to bear. Other days, she would simply take the brunt in her stoic silence, trying so badly to put on a brave face for her family. To Tali, giving a shaky smile and merely proclaiming that she was fine was the most natural reaction she could conceive, even in such a trying moment. Shepard knew that Tali was averse to being treated like an invalid—she wanted to fight her own battles all the time._

 _But if Tali could not find victory from this battle, surely Shepard could not even entertain the idea of just standing by._

 _A glare fell upon Tali's head, shining and completely hairless. Shepard had to look away as a distinct pain rippled against his heart, claiming his breath and constricting his vision in a ragged pulse. The chemotherapy had not been a pleasant experience for Tali. The chemicals that had been injected into her bloodstream to fight the cancer had caused her hair to fall out. She was now completely bald, her wavy black locks having been completely excised from her body. She had to endure medication after medication… but nothing seemed to take. The pain was always present. The cancer never withdrew completely. She was deteriorating before Shepard's very eyes._

 _Staring silently at the crying form of his wife, Shepard nearly sobbed out loud as well in his anguish, all because of the impotency that had seemed to have infected his very being. There had never been a problem that he could never solve before… but this… this was something else. His best friend was falling apart piece by piece every day and not even the power he held in his hands could hold her together._

 _The simple and obvious truth repeated itself ad infinitum within his head, exhibiting itself as a nasty taunt to drive him insane. Tali was dying._

 _An inclination teased itself against the very edge of Shepard's mind, inviting him to lose himself over to despair. With each passing day, the desire grew in power, driving energy from his resistance. It yearned for his collapse, to seize upon the tender core his defenses had shored up. All of his barriers were being broken down, he could not hold for very long._

 _He could not give in! There were people here who still needed him!_

 _Finally edging his way around the bed, despite the uncertainty, Shepard now stood directly in front of Tali, whose head was still tilted downward as she fought to contain herself. She gave no indication that she recognized his presence. From this perspective, Shepard could now fully perceive that Tali was completely unclothed. Sweat glistened upon the quarian's chest, giving a shimmer to her skin. Tali had been a very lean person for her entire life, but every single scrap of fat had all been eaten away from the cancer. She was shockingly thin now—it seemed that she had actually shrunk a bit in size. Her ribs were now startlingly apparent. Her breasts clung to her tightly. Her stomach curved inward—she had possessed no appetite in weeks._

 _Now all that Shepard could see in front of him was the last vestige of Tali, herself teetering upon the edge. It seemed pointlessly cruel that everything in his life had all led up to this, for his wife to be totally debilitated by a disease that was consuming her from the inside out. She had to live in pain every single waking hour of every single day._

 _And every single day Shepard wished that he had been the one to bear this punishment. Not her. Anyone but her._

" _You… you shouldn't… have to see me… like this…" her voice unexpectedly flitted into his ear._

 _Shepard regained focus and saw that Tali had raised her head up during his ruminations. Her pearl eyes shone with tears, but they silently spilled down her cheeks as she bravely made an effort to regain some of her dignity back. She tenderly crossed her arms over her chest, covering herself on instinct at first, but loosened back up when she realized just how many times Shepard had seen her naked and that this was nothing new for him. Tali had been inside her suit for too much of her life to be completely comfortable with being naked, but she had learned to combat her fears and reveal herself to her husband, in both her body and her love._

 _In response, Shepard knelt down and took Tali's hands in his. Her skin was cold to the touch. Alarmed, Shepard instinctively tightened his grip upon her to give her more warmth._

" _I shouldn't have to be locked away from you," was his simple reply._

 _The quarian sniffled, but offered no more words of opposition._

 _Shepard then took his left hand, leaving Tali to grasp his right with both hands in a death grip, while he gently rubbed up from Tali's naked shoulder, to the side of her neck, and finally to her cheek. Tali's sweat and tears shone upon his palm and Shepard gently cupped his wife's face, brushing away the dampness with a thumb._

" _Tell me what hurts," he demanded after a strong silence, the request itself tender._

" _Ev-," Tali attempted before swallowing painfully. "Everything. I… I ache all over. I can't even remain sitting without something hurting. The medicine… it burns… under my skin. It feels like there is something in my abdomen… clawing to get out. I… I can't… I don't know how much I can take anymore."_

 _Tali's hands, having been shaking since she started talking, were now full-on vibrating. Shepard had to tense his arm up to even have a hope of quelling the violent trembles._

" _John…" the quarian whispered, terrified, "I don't know what I did to be like this. I've only made you and Roahn suffer alongside me. I… that's… John, I'm s-s-sorr—"_

" _Don't," Shepard sharply uttered as he placed his hand lightly over Tali's mouth, causing her to cease in her talking. "I will never blame you for this. Never."_

 _Tears mustered their way from Tali's eyes again, dripping onto Shepard's fingers. "Our daughter…"_

" _She'll understand. I'll make sure that she will understand everything. But… right now, you're more important."_

" _John, I don't know… what I have left. I can't ask you to help me anymore."_

 _Keeping his face stalwart, Shepard tightened his jaw as he let cold determination steel him in place. He locked eyes with Tali, keeping his pupils in a firm and focused line straight towards Tali, fixating her with his watchful eyes._

" _Just tell me what you want," he breathed lovingly. "Anything you ask of me, I will do."_

 _Tali hiccoughed, obviously torn by the request that kept bubbling at the edge of her lips, desperate to become voiced. She cocked her head as a sad smile graced her lips, fumbling and drunken. She almost seemed hesitant, embarrassed to be potentially asking anything beyond what was conceivable for Shepard. He was just a man, not omnipotent._

 _But he did have something that she wanted so dearly. Tali's heartbeat resonated throughout her body—three pulses in a quick rhythm. 'Anything,' he had said._

 _Anything._

 _The human mustered a smile, affirming his words. So much love…_

 _Three fluttering fingers reached out, lifting away from Shepard's hand as Tali motioned her own appendage towards Shepard's face. Her palm lightly brushed the two-day old stubble on his cheeks, letting each individual scratch of trimmed hair snag at the grooves in her skin. She sighed in bliss from the touch._

 _Then Tali let her hand drift lower, past his chest, down to his hips. A gray hand fumbled at the belt over his waist. Shepard looked up at Tali for confirmation._

" _I… I…" the quarian spoke, a newfound courage seeping into her actions, "I want… you."_

 _In an instant, the wavelengths between their two minds merged into a single frequency. Understanding held and locked their eyes. Shepard's own look softened, nearly melting, as he finally figured out how he could comfort his wife the most. He knew what she needed._

 _Sometimes the basest impulses are derived from the most powerful of emotions. Words could not be translated towards describing the sheer might that these urges would savagely take hold upon a living being—only actions could serve as the story upon which these emotions would be described. Love requited, answered both ways, is one of those bonds that goes beyond tangible strength. It could be worn like armor, yet it was malleable enough to be shaped within those that had nurtured it._

 _This need burned within Shepard, his final drive, this unbearable pressure to impart all of his love upon one person._

 _Not a second would be wasted._

 _Shepard moved forward swiftly, yet carefully, and immediately captured Tali's mouth with his. Their tongues met furiously as the energy that had been physically separating them had finally imploded in a burst of victory. Shepard could feel Tali's warm tears soak his cheeks, and he let out a muffled groan when he felt her hand slip inside his pants. Tali gripped and explored him with her fingers as she kissed him, both gasping with lust into each other's mouths._

 _Everything about Shepard felt perfect to Tali. She let his taste linger upon her tongue as she gripped and played with him with her hands, coaxing only more desperation out of him. It was working, for Shepard was grabbing at her head, tears now falling from his eyes as well, lips hopelessly locked with hers as they grunted, gasped, and cried together._

 _With a wet sound, their kiss finally ended and Shepard quickly yanked off his shirt and pulled his pants down, stepping out of them in a flash. Tali barely had any time to admire her husband's body, for Shepard had knelt down in a flash and had proceeded to abruptly position his head between her legs, already kissing and licking at her down there._

 _It was in this moment that Tali was struck by a fit of clarity. Overwhelmed emotionally and physically, pleasure wafting up in powerful waves from where Shepard was attending to her, Tali stared off into space as the tears began to drip once more. She trembled and quivered, staring blankly at the wall while her hands automatically massaged her husband's scalp. Her nails gently dug into Shepard's skin as she parted the bristles of his hair. Thick trails stained her cheeks as her entire vision turned watery. Tali had to close her eyes for a moment to collect her thoughts, her breathing now hitching as she realized she had been moaning out loud this entire time. Her hips had been grinding themselves into Shepard's face, who was murmuring in deep desire as he let himself become surrounded by the quarian, exploring her with his lips and tongue. Already her body was starting to seize. It was as if Shepard was pulling the orgasm right out of her._

 _Tali cried out again and helplessly leaned over Shepard's head as she felt herself begin to be captured in the throes of a climax. Her entire body was now enveloping the head of her husband; her breasts were mashed at the top of his skull, her stomach puffed out against his forehead. Her hands drifted downward as she felt herself liquefy. Tali's fingers circled Shepard's nipples and ran through his soft chest hair, making the man gasp in a fervor._

 _She sobbed out his name._

 _Answering her call, Shepard lifted his head up, lips shining, and gently placed his hands upon both sides of her neck. Her skin was now scalding hot, thudding powerfully as warm blood rushed through her body._

" _P-Please…" was her pitiful cry, her bottom lip quivering heavily as she fought to contain her fears. She had to remain brave, for his sake._

 _Both of them soon lay on the bed, Shepard gently positioned on top of Tali. He slowly ran his fingers on top of Tali's bald head, wiping away the sweat and tears that had stained them both. Tali continued to helplessly sob, crying while being engulfed by Shepard's touch. She hated that she was such a state right now—in a time like this, she should be completely beside herself with happiness! She should have been overjoyed to be making love to her husband, but all she could consider was a resounding certitude that her delights would come to an end eventually. No more of this. No more of sharing Shepard._

 _No more Roahn. Keelah, her daughter…_

 _The quarian was dangerously close to becoming fully catatonic—her fierce love for the man sliding inside her right now was straining her mental bonds. Guilt and devotion clashed together in an epic battle in her head. As she held onto the human that pushed his way into her, Tali's could only envision a future of Shepard being completely alone. She saw, in her mind's eye, her husband and her daughter, both of them sitting in a room without her presence joining them. The image, vivid and clear, was a stark depiction of the two people she loved the most sitting at a table, facing each other with blank stares, hopelessly lost to sadness. The very thought felt like someone had run her through and Tali's teeth clenched together at the awful thought._

 _Tali looked up towards the ceiling, consumed by the awful images in her head even as she continued to have sex with Shepard. The tears would not stop flowing. All she could imagine was the inevitability of her death, that her illness would finally take hold, ripping her away from her family. Would this be the last time she could make love to her dearest friend? Did she only have a limited time left with her daughter? What would become of them afterward? There was so much she still wanted to do. Tali wanted nothing more than to finally scream out her terror, to cry out for Shepard to protect her, to save her, to tear out this infection that had rotted her from the inside out. The finality of her life was weighing upon her all at once right now, threatening to crush the woman with its dramatic materiality._

 _More time. All she had ever wanted was more time._

 _Did she not deserve that, at least?_

 _Something caught Tali in her chest and she let out a fluid gasp as she suddenly felt her consciousness come spiraling down to the ground. A deep pressure pooled near her groin and a moan escaped the low reaches of her throat as she was finally able to take in the broad and muscular frame of the human smoothly thrusting into her. Now she was able to feel herself truly responding to Shepard as she pressed her body against him more firmly. The human was raggedly gasping, holding back his own fears as he buried his face into Tali's neck. His hands alternated between holding the smooth flesh of Tali's back to groping down towards her firm butt. They both drooled as they kissed once more, each one of them fully knowing the dire consequences but refusing to humor any of them right now. Their love was more important._

 _A sexual haze choked them both. Shepard and Tali were drenched in sweat, their bodies slippery to the touch. Tali thoughts drifted away as Shepard started to pound into her, his actions forceful yet she could sense a tiny bit of hesitation on his end, like he was trying to enjoy this moment to the full while wanting to make it last for as long as possible. Tali didn't care. She just wanted to feel the human. The pleasure was overwhelming her in a torrid and delirious fog. The quarian deliberately guided one of the human's hands to cup one of her breasts. She clenched her own appendage, silently urging the man to squeeze her there, which he did so to her everlasting satisfaction. She could feel herself clenching upon Shepard as he filled her just so perfectly. Her eyes rolled up into her head and she bit Shepard's collarbone out of instinct, tasting the salt of his skin upon her tongue._

 _Something began to unfurl within her and Shepard was vibrating with a similar sort of energy as well. Their eyes, millimeters away from the other, reflected each other's inner glow._

" _Loving you…" Tali whispered, her breath barely wafting across to Shepard's lips, "…was the best thing that ever happened to me."_

 _There was nothing that Shepard could say that could have a hope of reflecting the unceasing yearning for the woman he held in his arms. Enraptured by how beautiful she was, Tali's presence sang in his heart, declaring her undying infatuation for him. A ripple echoed within Shepard and he let out a desperate gasp as he finally went over the edge, losing himself within his wife._

 _Tali uncontrollably moaned as a new heat source bloomed inside her. Together, the couple shared one last thrust, milking the last of their efforts together while the pleasure from their sex simmered down to a broil._

 _The quarian stroked Shepard's now tear-streaked face, a soft smile gracing her features. She had finally come to terms with her mortality. She had found her peace._

 _As the night went on, Shepard would eventually find himself cradling the sleeping Tali over his lap. She seemed so small in his arms. Her head lolled as she dozed, a peaceful expression on her face. They were still naked, having not bothered to put their clothes back on. Coverings were trivialities compared to the permanence that they faced. Shepard could not take his hands off the resting alien, silently sighing in his own private form of mourning. Holding her in his arms, simply savoring the feeling of touching her warm body, was a feeling he had promised himself long ago that he would never take for granted._

 _By god, he still had not._

 _Blissfully unaware, exhausted but happy, the dozing Tali murmured in her sleep. She could still find perfection, even through her pain._

 _Watching Tali rest, Shepard envied that quality very much._

* * *

 _In its own private world, a cell exists in a hollow of near-nothingness that is a construction of what little consciousness it possesses. It cannot think or feel like any other creature in the galaxy. All it can do is live, fueled only by the most basic of programmed commands locked within its nucleus: survive._

 _And survive it does. The cell does not decide its ultimate purpose—life does that job for it. It could be delegated to serve as a building block for tissue, or to act as a conveyer for oxygen, or even simply to act as a defense for an organism. The cell will never realize its potential relative to its purpose. It will never determine how its duties will ensure its own survival. But the cell will never be able to stop performing its set function. It will never have a choice in the matter._

 _To that effect, the extent of a cell's awareness is restricted to that of a void, black and featureless. Even when confronted with any sort of abnormality that might threaten to impede a cell's duties, the cell cannot envision any sort of danger present. An individual cell is stupid. It lacks the capability to evade any hazards that might bring about its doom. A cell, positioned next to a threat, simply proceeds on its route as normal, oblivious to any sort of crisis around it._

 _It is this very weakness that allows such a deadly chain reaction to occur._

 _A particular cell might encounter an unfamiliar ripple. Energy billowing in an invisible wake. The cell proceeds, unperturbed. Careless. It does not know the sort of danger it has wandered into. Pools of emissions have gathered in small clusters within a particular organ, leeching off all the cells it comes into. This one cell has just now come into the domain of the diffusion. Its fate has now been sealed._

 _An ionization event occurs. Free radicals bubble deep in the very fabric of strands that comprise the cell itself: its DNA. These bubbles distort and bulge, pushing aside matter as the void of reactive oxides grows, tumor-like. The DNA bends in the wake of these radical droplets, each bubble merging together to create a foam-like structure, frothing and ballooning as it feeds off of the surrounding energy._

 _The foam grows too large. The DNA can no longer contain the damage. As the bubbles finally warp and explode, the shockwave takes the DNA with it. Nucleobases rip and tear from the main structure, breaking the backbone of the amino acids that have been locked together. The shattered DNA drifts aimlessly. More bubbles burst. The damage is systemic._

 _The cell's DNA is compromised. Nothing is left to define its genetic code anymore. The cell crumples in on itself, blackening and crumbling to nothing. It withers and dies an ignominious death. The worst part is that it never had the capacity to spare a single thought towards its demise, for had it been able to wonder what had killed it, maybe it could have saved the lives of more of its brethren._

 _In the wake of the cell's remains, the foaming energy lingers, waiting to snag another hapless victim._

* * *

 _Chimera freighter – 2198_

 _Tali…_

The scene vanished within Shepard's vision before he could even imagine reaching out with his mind to hold it back. The warmth of his bedroom was sucked into the vacuum of his consciousness with a snap, letting the cold air of the freighter's hold replace it. The heat from Tali's skin was no longer apparent—the chafing of the electromagnetic gauntlets suspending him in midair were now discernable once more.

Something scintillated in Shepard's eyes and he shook his head thickly. He rolled his jaw and gave several nictations, finding his overall situation to be quite less improved from the scene he had just left.

"Hallucination?" a layered and dark voice throbbed in the dimness. Shepard craned his neck and found that the Legionnaire was still stoically appraising him, the cyborg's eternal expression completely levelled right at his face. "A common side effect with sodium thiopental. Very quick, but very visceral. You were gone for… nearly a minute."

 _Was that all_? Shepard thought, but he remained silent. He continued to pour all his focus into amplifying his useful senses so that he could reconstruct his surroundings for him to observe. After a brief analysis, Shepard did come to the unfortunate conclusion that he was still trapped and that there was no way out of this hopeless mess.

Business as usual, apparently.

It was difficult for Shepard not to wish that he was back in his memories. Even though the melancholy tone of the last time he had made love to his wife resonated upon him harshly, he would have given every single last credit in his name just to spend one more solitary minute with Tali. Just one minute. His dreams were the only place that he could be reunited with her now.

"It seems so trivial," the Legionnaire now murmured, the outline of his body barely shining through the glum darkness, "for your wife to have died of an easily treatable disease. Ovarian cancer. Interesting. A purposeless end to a person of her stature… quite unsatisfying. Yet… the connection is unclear. You said that the source of this illness came from you. I can't help but wonder… how?"

Shepard was about to answer, his tongue still being held in the grip of the drugs coursing through his body, when the Legionnaire waved a hand and answered in his stead. "No, it's too simple. I have a hard time believing that someone, even a quarian, can die from any form of cancer. It should have been picked up early enough for action to have been taken against it. Even though she supposedly died from cancer, you apparently have not been treated for it, Shepard. I have your medical records to prove it and they show that you have not been hospitalized for the same therapy that Tali'Shepard went through. Cancer technically cannot be transferred between bodies. And the ovarian form is not present within males, obviously. There has to be another catalyst involved here. How could you have given your wife this disease in the first place, Shepard?"

Drool now started to trickle out of the corner of Shepard's mouth, driven forth by gravity. Unable to wipe at his jaw, Shepard just dumbly stared as the spittle dangled from him, simultaneously feeling hot and cold as he fought to keep his lips shut, for him to not relieve the worst parts of his life.

But even his own body would prove to betray him.

"No one picked up on it…" Shepard started, sodium thiopental tugging eagerly at him, "…because when the cancer appeared, everyone thought it was a one-off thing. The doctors figured that Tali got the cancer from all the hormone therapy that all quarians are required to undergo when she was in her twenties. They never thought that a constant source might have been the cause of the whole thing."

Shepard looked up at his tormentor, teeth gritted, eyes shining with tears. " _Me_. It was all me. I was the one infected with the radiation that killed my wife. The radiation… I have no idea how I became exposed to the dosage that exists within my cells. There were so many opportunities in my life that it could have happened. I might have wandered too close to a cracked eezo housing on a battlefield, unknowingly exposing myself. Or… it could have been the time when I was lying unconscious on the Citadel after activating the Crucible. I had been just lying there for hours, exposed directly to the harmful radiation present in space. Cosmic rays had been pummeling my body that whole time… and I had absorbed it all. But I might have been completely irradiated even before then and… I… I just don't know. I will never know what the defining moment was that led to Tali's death."

Shepard was now openly weeping, hanging his head as tears and drool dribbled downward, splatting the floor beneath him. The Legionnaire, oddly amused at watching the great Commander Shepard sob, slowly walked forward a couple of paces until he was within arm's reach of the human. He knelt down, his head barely a couple of feet away from Shepard's face.

"No one ever detected the radiation in you prior to that?" the cyborg asked, his voice now taking on an eerily gentle tone. There was a shifting sound from the segmented portion of his neck as his head tilted in intrigue. "A medical scan would have picked that up quite simply, I reckon."

"They didn't…" Shepard said through a clenched jaw, "…because they were relying on my _implants_ for the proper readings."

The Legionnaire straightened his head, confused. "Explain."

"My implants. The hardware that Cerberus put into me for their little Lazarus project. Cutting-edge technology, more advanced than anyone had ever seen before. It was designed so that anyone looking to do a full medical scan would only need to link to the port on my implants—near my neck—to get the accurate readouts for what my health was like. But that was the problem. The implants… had changed me. Made me… something else. They heightened my metabolism, increased my muscle density, improved my immune system, and… and they had even made it so that I could take radiation exposure much better than I could normally. More than any normal human could take."

"I see," the Legionnaire nodded but gestured for the human to continue.

"So, even though the radiation in me continued to build up over time, my implants made it so that I would not be adversely affected by it. The threshold for it harming me had been increased but that very threshold was being compared to the limit that was considered healthy for everyone else. If I absorbed a dose lethal enough to kill a regular human, the implants would simply measure that as a percentage against the true dosage level I could theoretically take. I could store more radiation, you see, but the implants would continue to give normal readings!"

"Ah. A bug in the software. A very costly error for the developers to make. I suppose this explains why you've been using Entolimod to counter the effects. It's well known that Entolimod does help lessen the damage done from radiation poisoning, but is also prone to exhibit painful side effects, which, I'll wager, are what you're feeling right now."

The Legionnaire reached out with a finger and gently prodded Shepard's forehead. The battered and agonized human winced at that, the tendons in his arms now bulging their way past the skin as a ring of sweat drenched his shirt near his neck.

"You exposed your wife to this radiation repeatedly," the cyborg hissed. It was not a question.

Shepard blurted out a cry before proceeding. "It was in my blood. My fluids. _Everything_. Whenever Tali and I shared ourselves, shared our fluids, I was exposing her to my radiation. God… I… I kept on infecting her… it was in my _sperm_ … and I never knew until… until… until it was too late."

A final keen escaped Shepard's throat as a flash of Tali's loving face floated across his subconscious. Prolonged guilt and misery were finally allowed to seep into the pores of the human as his worst crime became exposed. Shepard's head hung limply, pupils dilated, feeling sick as his nerves, previously wired hot, all fell dark in an instant.

The human, broken, dangled where he was hung, left to contend with the weight of his crime as judgment reared its head.

A tiny warble murmured from the Legionnaire's vocabulator—a sign of satisfaction. He patted the top of Shepard's head as he stood back up, his eyes emitting a distant sort of understanding, but also a complete lack of caring at the same time.

"Touching," the cyborg sneered, "but maybe you do understand the cost of what you've wrought by keeping secrets. Now you're at your most pliable. We can proceed with the real questions, which should become quite simple for you to answer now that we've gotten past the hard part."

At this point, Shepard had gone past the realm of minding his own sanity now that his most private memories had been ripped out of him with ease. He would have answered any questions the Legionnaire had for him without mounting any resistance now that the futility of his life was slowly coming to fruition. Even though he was in a miserable way, a deep part of his brain remained receptive, eager to provide the answers his captor sought. They would have been offered soon enough… had the freighter not given an unexpected lurch.

The jolt was nearly imperceptible to all within the hold, but Shepard could at least see that the Legionnaire had to subtly shift his weight from one leg to the next. The cyborg was more attuned to changes such as this and he whirled in all directions, trying to determine the source of this disturbance before he looked out of the tiny portholes in the corner of the room, finding them lit by the light of distant starts instead of the purple haze that was a usual hallmark of FTL travel. They were back in real space, traveling at sublight speeds once again.

"Hmm," the Legionnaire grumbled. " _That_ was certainly quick." What was unsaid was that their perceived passage had been quicker than altogether expected… by about an hour, according to the Legionnaire's timetable. Unless they had somehow managed to break a few more laws of physics by hopping through FTL and the relay system faster than they had thought possible, there was no reason for this ship to have suddenly been pushed out of their extreme speed lane.

The harried ringing from a notification on the Legionnaire's omni-tool was too suspect to be a coincidence, either.

"What?" the mechanoid barked as he activated the call.

" _We've been deposited out of FTL before we could reach our destination, sir_ ," a guard broke out on the other end. " _Some sort of problem with the navigational flight controls_."

"So? Fix it!"

" _We can't, sir. It appears we have a saboteur on board_."

"Oh? And why do you think that?"

" _Because a hole has been blown into one of the cooling tanks in the engine bay… and the security desk has been completely shot to pieces. We've also got a smashed LOKI mech down on the furthest level. Our guess is that someone hacked into the mech and ordered it to shoot up the place before forcing it to commit suicide_."

If the cyborg could display expressions, he would have looked absolutely murderous right about now. "You can't muster a patrol to find this saboteur yourself?"

The man on the other end did not sound all that pleased to be having this conversation, either. " _Well… sir, we're going to need to input your override code into the secondary station to resume our transit. Right now, we're several thousand lightyears from our main destination. Chimera protocols maintain that only the commander of the ship can program—"_

The Legionnaire, now completely disgruntled at having been interrupted, unleashed a ferocious sigh. "Fine. I'll be right down." Hanging up the call, he nudged a final look at Shepard. "The result of an inefficient hierarchy. This organization just does not prize individuals who take the initiative. Failure is an inevitability, it seems. Not for me, though. You're my ticket out of here, Shepard. Soon enough, there won't be any of me around to care at all what happens afterward."

The Legionnaire placed a hand upon the thick plume of gray hair that adorned Shepard's head. The human winced at the cold touch—it felt like someone was placing ice cubes directly to his skin.

"We'll talk later, Shepard. Try not to wander off."

Laughing to himself at the rather lame joke he had just made, the Legionnaire stalked right out of the room, the doors parting to briefly reveal a pair of Chimera troopers flanking the threshold, before it slid shut once more, sealing Shepard all by his lonesome within the expanse.

Several minutes passed with Shepard having been left to his own devices in the matter of keeping himself entertained. Of course, it was difficult trying to lose himself in his own thoughts while he was dangling like this, trussed up in such a demeaning position while his blood pooled in all the wrong spots, his head spinning from the mental abuse he had just inflicted upon himself. At this point, Shepard was even hoping that another drug-induced hallucination would take him right now so that he would no longer have to concern himself with the affairs of the present, but that aspect of the sodium thiopental had long passed. Sober reality was all he had to contend with right now.

 _Just take me to when she was alive. Let me be in a time where I had not yet made my mistakes._

His solemn concentration and prayers for another round of visions did not help, as he still remained remarkably lucid. It had felt like he had been mustering his mind to break for over an hour when it had not even been five minutes yet. If Shepard had access to a chronometer, he would be deeply dismayed.

With having nothing to do except wait around for the Legionnaire to return, Shepard relegated himself to be continually suspended within this infernal contraption until then.

But then a clattering sound—just below him, at the foot of the dais he was positioned on—caught his attention. There was a muffled grunt, a hollow noise like someone kicking sheet metal, and an empty grate suddenly tumbled into view, emitting a tinny racket as it bounced upon the floor. Shepard was still in too calm of a state for him to betray much of a reaction to this grate suddenly being propelled upon the sloped floor, but even the sodium thiopental could not stifle the reaction he gave when he saw his daughter scurry out from a passage beneath the stage, the sapphire colors of her hood and visor (not to mention her diminutive size) quite unmistakable.

Dusting herself off, Roahn turned around at an agonizingly slow speed. Her eyes met her father's in an instant, shining sadly through the murk, the pain readily apparent upon her veiled expression, mirroring his own.

If Roahn had been expecting a certain kind of reaction from her father, namely a choice rebuke at her spontaneous and perhaps unwise decision to rescue him in such a fashion, it did not come from Shepard's mouth. The man had finally run out of all resistance in his body. It was done, the final barriers breached. Deep within, Shepard _knew_ what had motivated his daughter to get this far and that chastising her for acting upon her own natural instincts would be just another exercise in futility.

 _She is her mother's child, through and through._

The air between the two of them had become thickened, a tenuous sort of energy almost passing imperceptibly around them. Shepard did not take his eyes off his daughter but puffed out a silent sigh, nothing but acceptance sagging his features.

"How much did you hear?" he whispered, already knowing what the answer was going to be.

Roahn's hands formed a knot as she held them close to her chest. Unblinking, she slowly tiptoed her way to the hovering and spread-eagled form of her father, facing a slight resistance in her legs as though Shepard exuded an invisible force field of repulsion around him.

"I think I heard everything," the girl mustered, her words piercing with a terrible clarity.

Shepard just bit his lip and gave a sage-like nod, closing his eyes as he did so. There was nothing else to say because he knew he had no defense for her. The hole had already been dug with him in it. He could not hope to clamber his way out.

"Look, Roahn… I…" Shepard shook his head pathetically but appearing contrite was rather difficult in his current position. "I know what you must be feeling right now and… I completely understand. But if you would just listen to me for—"

Just how long the length of time that Shepard intended to use in order to provide all the context he could to his daughter was never made apparent. In that moment, Roahn had stabbed at a control upon her omni-tool, forcefully and unsubtly using it as a message to convey to her father that she was envisioning her emphatic movements to be metaphorically causing him harm. Shepard felt his body begin to be lowered gently to the ground, as the electric bolts casually warped from the electromagnetic gauntlets while he was in the process of being deposited. He landed upon his stomach quite smoothly and, with a hissing and a series of dull _thunks_ , the bolts upon the gauntlets released, emitting an acrid scent of cordite and copper. The gauntlets then split in half, allowing Shepard to crawl to freedom, albeit with a few markings etched into his skin from how tightly the gauntlets had been fastened around his wrists.

Rubbing at his limbs to coax blood back into those areas, he was about to utter another apology to his daughter when he was suddenly face-to-face with her as she glared angrily at him, towering over him while he was still on his knees.

" _Shut up_ ," he heard Roahn snap at him. "Just shut up right now, dad. There will be another time for this, but not now. Just _be quiet_ and we'll be able to get away."

"Yes, Tal—I mean, Roahn," Shepard murmured, head still feeling thick. He stumbled to his feet, but walking was difficult. His balance was shot and a murky filter was still seeping across his eyes like he was drunk.

"Here," Roahn offered as her voice took on a tangible softness, a far cry from the harshness that she had just exhibited. She grabbed at her father's hand and gently led him off the platform, slowing to make sure that he could climb down the stairs without tripping and falling like an oaf.

Shepard tried to stem the flow of wheezes that were being emitted from his throat—his calves were already cramping, his joints felt like they were grinding against one another, and the headache at his temples was approaching a steady throb. Dizziness pounced upon him. He was in quite a bad way.

Roahn, truthfully having been terrified after speaking to Shepard in such a vicious fashion, was now fueled by a bottomless patience as she led him to the back of the room, slowly so that the human would not stumble over his own feet, where there was a tiny door that led to the outside hall. Roahn had already scoped it for guards before entering the room, but she still poked her head out to make sure. As expected, there was no one in sight. Jerking her father's arm to make him stay close, she hung a right and headed to a service staircase near the corner of the ship, confident that they were not going to cross into any Chimera troopers along the way.

"You have a plan?" Shepard whispered, submitting himself completely into his daughter's guidance.

"I do," the girl replied with confidence, her narrowed eyes brimming with determination.

"The ship dropping out of FTL… _you_ had something to do with that, I reckon?"

"Yes," Roahn nodded. "Didn't take much, really. Just inserted a few lines of code into the ship's programmed flows and… well…"

"Hey," Shepard murmured, causing Roahn to look up at him. "Good job."

The well of anger inside Roahn lowered a tad. She broke their stare and appeared lost for a second. " _Thanks_ ," she breathed nearly imperceptibly.

 _Is that all you can say to him?!_ was the lone statement that thudded in the girl's head. No, she reasoned. No, it wasn't. After what she had just heard, all those abominable statements about how her mother had passed… Roahn still had not managed to find the words to chastise her father with. This unspeakable anger was boiling inside her, but that was just a distraction. She could not let herself be blinded by her revulsion to the man whose hand she was now holding.

 _Father, what have you done?_

They edged their way down the stairs, both on their guard at all times, but their caution would soon prove to have been all for naught as they reached the bottom floor without having run into any unsavory individuals at all. For what they knew, the Legionnaire and perhaps the majority of Chimera soldiers were in the engine bay, checking out the damage, which was on the opposite end of the ship. With any luck, Roahn and Shepard would be out of harm's way before any of their enemies realized what was going on.

"Where are we headed?" Shepard whispered to Roahn as they entered a very dark and industrial looking area. "Hangar bay or escape pods?"

One of the two would be ideal for usage in escapes.

"Escape pods," Roahn grimaced as they crouched underneath a low overhang filled with brightly colored pipes that carried some sort of deadly gas or liquid throughout the ship. The yellow warning labels plastered onto the pipes helped reinforce the danger inherent and Roahn made a mental note of her surroundings for later use.

Light shone from the top and bottom in segmented patterns, thrown into disarray as the illumination was parted by the thick grating that acted as both floor and ceiling for the entire area. Steam hissed off into a shadowy corner, obscuring part of the hallway in a faint mist. A couple dozen meters in the distance, Roahn was able to see six bright red lights spear their way through the darkness—three lights on either side of the hall. Each light corresponded to a large circular door, thrown wide open, that emitted a column of unnaturally white luminosity—entrances to the escape pods.

None of the pods had been ejected, to Shepard's relief. Dealer's choice.

"We're in range of a planet," Roahn said before Shepard could think to inquire more as to what the plan was. "We'll get down to the surface and get help from there."

It was certainly more of a plan than Shepard had a few minutes ago, so he could only go along with whatever his daughter had in mind.

"What are the chances that we'll be found out before we leave?"

Like clockwork, a harsh roar of an alarm blared monstrously off in the distance, loud klaxons endlessly repeating the same multi-toned note over and over while blaring yellow diodes started to blink and spasm in the throes of its chaotic wiring. Shepard and Roahn were alternately bathed in crimson and orange lights, offering strobing glimpses against their faces as Shepard's question was answered before Roahn could even open her mouth.

"Forget I asked," Shepard struggled to make his answer audible above the din.

The two of them then doubled their efforts to reach the end of the hall where the pod entrances were located. However, Roahn did not enter the closest one right away, and Shepard hung back, leaning against the wall to watch her. The girl headed instead for the console right at the side of the door, opening up separate tabs to different processes as she worked.

"I have to set the escape pod's trajectory!" Roahn explained. "I couldn't do that earlier at the security station."

"Just be quick, we might have some company very soon," Shepard said. "Do you still have the pistol I gave you?"

Roahn reached down at her waist and tossed the gun to her father. Shepard fumbled the gun for a few seconds, his hand-eye coordination still out of whack. Eventually, he managed to fit the grip in his sweaty palm, taking note that the pistol's readout indicated that the thermal clip was one bullet less than a full load. He disregarded that for now, as a new sizzling noise, apparent even amongst the thick steam, started to make itself known. A glimmer of movement sparked from the end of the corridor they had just came through, light folding upon itself to create a humanoid shape, entrancing in its fluidity.

From out of the fog, a hologram stepped forth.

" _I knew, I just knew that something like this was going to happen_ ," Larsen's image bemoaned as he shook his head, stopping to within a few feet of Shepard and Roahn. " _I had hoped that I was merely succumbing to superstition, because even though the empirical evidence clearly indicated that you had a knack for escaping any confinements placed upon you, that somehow you would actually stay put this time around. Stupid of me, really, to expect any other result_."

Shepard readjusted his positioning behind the sights of the pistol as he squinted his eyes angrily. "If you knew I'd escape, Larsen, why'd you make it so easy for my daughter to bust me out?"

 _Larsen_ , Roahn tested the name out on her tongue as she stood beside Shepard. So, _this_ was the man responsible for chasing them all around the galaxy. She committed the human's image to memory, automatically linking his slick black hair, his trimmed goatee, craggy face, and broad frame with every single emotion in her body that linked to some form of disgust.

The projection of the prim and proper man stiffened, the corner of his mouth noticeably twitching in response to Shepard's taunt. " _I would have assumed that our contractors would have had everything under control. Obviously, that was not the case. Trust me, I cannot wait to hear this one explained."_ Larsen's gaze then shifted over to Roahn, who took a fearful step back as the blazing projection of the human's eyes took their time in spearing through the gloom to seemingly pierce through her visor. " _So… this is your daughter, eh? Can't say that I see much resemblance, Shepard._ "

Voices from the upper deck echoed frantically, wet and metallic. More steam surged into the lower levels, flooding the area with moisture.

"Oh, I'm going to be coming for _you_ real soon, Raynor," Shepard gritted through pained teeth, momentarily ignoring the noises. "You know the one thing that I've never understood about the people that chose to align themselves against me? It's that they thought they could get away with it. I've never made a habit of underestimating my abilities, Larsen, and still I had to face those that thought they knew better. Well… if you really wanted to test my patience, then you've got it. You wanted me to be back so badly? You should be careful what you wish for… because I will be back sooner than you think. This time, it will end with my hands around your neck, squeezing the life out of you!"

The entire time, Larsen's grin had been growing wider and wider, despite the fact that Shepard had become increasingly demonic as he threatened the senator. Larsen, showing gleaming teeth, then embarked into a slow clap, the noise oddly distorted through the hologram.

"Dad…" Roahn warned as she tugged at his wrist.

Larsen then gave a low chuckle, shaking his head as if he had not been listening to Shepard. " _You're no longer the commander you used to be, Shepard. You might still be able to spin an original speech here and there, but the ability of you backing up your words with actions is… lacking. Also amusing is the fact that you still believe that I am against you, when in fact my allegiance has never wavered at all!_ "

"Oh really?" Shepard waved the pistol around flippantly, gesturing to the bowels of the freighter. "Then what's all this? Overreacting on my account? Using military contractors to try and bring me in?"

" _No! This is all because you have strayed from your true allegiance: to the Alliance and to humanity! I am not the villain here, you are!"_

"I only wanted an out, Larsen. When I saw an opportunity, I took it. Don't try and insinuate that I somehow have sabotaged all of humanity just to fit this harebrained narrative that you're pushing."

" _Humanity has been sabotaged, Shepard. But are you so blind that you cannot see it, or is it because you're trying to protect yourself by denying all responsibility? Have you done enough to erase your guilt?_ "

"I harbor no guilt for humanity. I did all that was in my ability to do so for them," Shepard said and Larsen fumed.

" _What you did during the war might have been the right thing, but someone has to pay for all the posturing and the delaying. You may have done your job to bring the other races in line, Shepard… but were you quick enough?_ "

Before Shepard could answer, Larsen reached over past the lens of the hologram and plucked up an object out of the line of sight. Returning to his original position, the man suddenly waved what appeared to be a picture frame in front of Shepard's face, shaking his arm in determination as he meant for Shepard's gaze to focus there. He could see that two people were situated in the center of the frame; a woman and a child who was ostensibly her daughter, both human. They were dressed severely, in thin and sharp looking outfits, but their expressions were rather bright and cheery, each one smiling towards the camera that had taken their picture.

" _You see this?_ " Larsen was now seething, some intense emotion bubbling its way up his throat. " _The woman and the girl in the picture here? Do you recognize them?! Of course you don't—but you still feel their presence because their blood is on your hands, Shepard. They are among the humans that rests upon your conscience. You can't deny it, because you still own these deaths. All of them!_ "

"Wait a second," Shepard shook his head. "I don't—"

" _The woman and her child?_ _They're just like the rest of the billions on Earth who were slaughtered when the Reapers came. They thought that… if they made it to one of the shelters in the city… in London… that they would be safe. They probably held onto the hope that help would come. 'Commander Shepard will save the day!' That was the word the radios held onto constantly. Every week there was some new exploit about the adventures of the Normandy and its brave captain. You were out in the galaxy, securing allies for the final push on Earth for months on end. The folks in the trenches must have cheered each time you secured a victory—they were certain that the upcoming assault must have been days away. But weeks passed, then months, and those that who still survived could not understand what was taking so long. How could Commander Shepard forget about them? After all, he had managed to get so many people on his side: the turians, the quarians, the krogan, and even the geth. Still the skies remained dark. Eventually, without the arrival of their salvation, over time the Reapers eventually found the shelters and overran them in the eternal night. No one could hide forever. These humans… were either burned to ashes by the beams of the Reapers, ripped to shreds from the claws of banshees, or liquefied into fuel when the marauders came to take them to the processing plants. Which fate do you think my wife received, Shepard? What do you think happened to my daughter?!"_

"Your _family_ was in London…" Shepard gaped as the picture of the smiling girl etched itself into his eyes. A spark of life—unconditional love seeping through the constraints of the medium. "Everyone you ever cared about was killed twelve years ago."

There was a shattering sound from the hologram as Larsen angrily chucked the frame away, throwing it like a discus. " _All that mattered to me was in that city. When it was all over, I hurried back to the ruined planet to look for them. I sifted through the shattered remains of that city for three months, hoping to find their bodies. I must have turned over every stone, bloodied every inch of my body, just looking for them. But I never found them. When I finally accepted that cruel fact, I vowed that I would find some way to make whomever was responsible for our downfall pay for what they had done. I… promised… the memory of my little girl that I would show the galaxy at how we had been wronged!"_

Shepard nearly flinched away, reeling from the unbridled savagery that was oozing from Larsen's very voice. "You're just trying to find a way to lash out at everyone because the assault arrived too late to save your family?"

The very form of Larsen seemed to simmer in rage. " _Humans have suffered enough, Shepard. I have suffered enough. If it fell upon the aliens to save my family, then I shall stop at nothing to punish them in turn. You could not get the other races over to Earth quick enough. We all burned here while you were out there, tarrying around!"_

"All I did was to save Earth!" Shepard roared.

" _You didn't do enough! Would you call the loss of billions of lives a victory? Would you really be so content to let bygones be bygones in the wake of such a catastrophic genocide? I am not ready to accept that. Make no mistake, someone will face a reckoning for allowing this holocaust to happen. The Council failed to act despite being warned time and time again. Now is the chance for humans to show them what we're capable of. With or without you, Shepard, I will sever all of humanity's ties to the Council. No more will we be beholden to the whims of others. No more will we shoulder the hypocrisy in stoic silence. No more—_ "

The sound vanished from the hologram in a heartbeat, making it look like Larsen was choking in a vacuum. Apparently not realizing he had been muted, the image of the senator kept on rambling to himself, at least until the projection finally warped and dissipated with a snap, ridding the hold of his presence for good.

Shepard was allowed to breathe again, now noticing that sweat had beaded all along his eyelids. He mustered a tiny intake, filling his lungs, and he wiped his brow, more relieved than anything else that he no longer had to verbally spar with the damnable senator.

But how had…?

"That's enough out of him," Roahn snarled as she stepped forward, her omni-tool aglow about her arm, having hacked into the frigate's communications. "Come on, dad, get in the… _uh oh_."

Now Roahn was somewhat regretting cutting Larsen's feed because, just past where his hologram had emanated, the multitudinous glow from an array of tactical optics burst their way through the steam clouds, headed at the front by the tall, metallic foe that had been stalking them for so long. The crowd of Chimera troopers remained silent, their weapons nowhere near being pointed downrange, as they let their commander, the Legionnaire, stride forward. This was his show to deal with, and no one else's.

"You probably did everyone a favor by silencing that man," the Legionnaire crowed over the hissing pipes. "Had I the capability to tune out his words, given the chance, I would be availing myself to that ability quite often. Unfortunately, you two are due to suffer his presence just a bit longer."

The cyborg now lifted his arm, gripping what looked like a comically oversized shotgun. A variety of tubes had been plugged into ports upon the Legionnaire's chestplate, a cooling system already activated in preparation to disperse the excess heat. Casually, with a metal thumb, a laser sight was flicked on, mostly for the intimidation factor rather out of a tactical necessity, and a thin red beam poked its way through the fog and mist to rest gently at the middle of Shepard's chest.

The gesture was obvious: do not struggle and you won't be hurt. The Legionnaire had Shepard dead-to-rights, and that pistol that Shepard was holding was going to do far less damage to the Legionnaire compared to the shotgun the monstrosity was lugging around. One slug from that would probably burst his torso like an overripe piece of fruit.

In any case, Shepard was still not in any shape to land a direct hit on the Legionnaire at this distance—the sodium thiopental was still dancing in his veins, tilting his world from side to side, turning him sloppy.

The Legionnaire recognized this as well and gave a warbling laugh, the laser sight barely wavering. Dejected and a little bit humiliated, Shepard lowered the gun in frustration and let it dangle near his hip, fingers barely gripping it.

But another hand gently pulled it out of his grasp before he could even comprehend what was going on.

Roahn stepped in front of her father, both of her hands clenched upon the grip of the gun, one eye closed with the other lined up behind the iron sights of the pistol.

"Get in the _pod_ , dad," she said emphatically. "We have to go."

Shepard staggered to the side and reached out for his daughter. "Roahn—"

"Damn it, will you just do what I say?" she begged. _Now is not the time to be so stubborn, dad!_

The Legionnaire had been creeping forward this whole time and, even though the Predator pistol was in steadier hands now, he seemed to be more amused than ever as he took in the sight of the girl levelling the weapon right at his head. The cyborg was not at all concerned, for Roahn's novice skill level and the pathetic caliber of the pistol were not going to be enough to pierce his armor. Sensing that this would be the sort of encounter where perhaps his shotgun would be overkill, the Legionnaire stowed the weapon, clipping it onto his back.

"Put that down," the towering metal giant intoned as he crept forward, a claw-like arm outstretched. "A child like you should not be playing with guns."

Either it was the sheer adrenaline of the moment that caused Roahn to depress the trigger or it was from the indigence of being called a "child" that resulted in what happened next.

The blast from the pistol shook Roahn's wrists as a wreath of flame emitted from the muzzle. The shockwave threatened to deafen her, roaring and bouncing its way through the tight confines of the hold.

A streak of light, visible for only a nanosecond, but bright and beautiful as it sliced through the air, spat on towards its target while dozens of eyes tracked its trajectory in horror.

There was a spark and a harsh ping resounded as the bullet punched a small hole into a pipe next to the Legionnaire's head. The cyborg had long predicted where the actual shot was going to impact, thus he had not bothered to move at all. Instead he merely took a sideways glance at the leaking pipe that was causing a superheated jet of invisible gas to flood out with a high-pitched wailing noise.

The Legionnaire's gaze briefly shifted from the pipe and back to the girl. Roahn still maintained her stance, her eyes still slit as she gripped the pistol tighter. Her chest fluttered heavily, her arms were aching quite badly now.

"Clever," the Legionnaire sarcastically lauded. "Going after the gas line in the hopes of inciting an explosion… a good effort. Shame that you tried to detonate the inert O3 lines. It's not a flammable mix."

"I know," Roahn nodded. "But it is if you combine it with _xenon_."

The last syllable had barely finished being uttered when Roahn, wasting no time, lightly pulled on the trigger of the pistol a second time. Another roar emitted as the gun bucked again, letting loose its red-hot payload in a fine line, directed towards a tube that had been positioned next to the already leaking O3 pipe, this one marked with the chemical symbol "Xe."

" _No_ ," the Legionnaire whispered to himself.

Another spark glimmered into existence.

Perxenates of microscopic crystalline structures flumed out of the leak in the pipe—alkaline agents already oxidizing in the presence of the nitrogen-oxygen mix. The perxenates, however, then were assaulted by the billowing jet of O3 that had been slowly seeping into the air. This caused the crystals to collide in mid-air, inciting them to rapidly absorb what little moisture they could out of the stale air. In a flash, they merged, producing a boiling heat as a result of the fusion they had undergone. Combined, the scope of the conflagration inherent in their potential energy was massive.

Blue fire erupted in seething coils, bursting the pipes at the seams as it created a wall from the inferno. The Legionnaire was bathed in the blaze in an instant, surrounded by the oxidizing gases that fed the charring and hungry energy. The cyborg let out an uncontrollable bellow, his body draped in sheets of the sapphire flames. His shields fizzled and shattered in hexagonal fragments. His metallic armor began to glow red, then white as it grew hotter. The troopers on the other side of the partition flinched back in terror, momentarily caught off guard.

" _Go!_ " Roahn cried to her father, who was already clambering into the escape pod.

A calamitous series of barks and clangs from the corridor drew her attention away, just as she was about to follow Shepard into the pod. Bursting from the fire like a hellhound under the command of a demigod, the Legionnaire raced forward on all fours, snarling like a wild animal, flames licking at his chassis. The curling tendrils of the fire wrapped around his head, enhancing the otherworldly glow that emitted from his eyes. Roahn could only see murderous intent as the cyborg ripped the ground up with his clawed feet and hands, wrenching aside metal and steel to drive himself forward, the scorched and damaged body not willing to let such punishing heat slow it down.

" _SHEPARD!_ " the Legionnaire screamed, the force of the shout seemingly yearning to tear both Roahn and Shepard apart from the inside out as it shook their bones and rattled their heads.

More atomic flares glimmered from the Legionnaire's feet as he made gouges in the grating. At this speed, he would be on top of them in moments, able to rip them apart or take them back into custody. The cyborg was only becoming more beastly as the fire transformed him, creating a shining wreath not unlike haptic armor that shrouded him, coddled him, that seemed to grow out of his very body as if the fire was natural to him. Wherever the machine touched, embers lingered behind to suck at the empty reserves of oxygen left down here in the hold. Ashes and cinders puffed out from the air intakes near the Legionnaire's column, almost as if he was expelling smoke with each breath.

The Legionnaire was almost on top of them and the monster raised a hand, steaming and boiling with heat, in preparation to strike.

But Roahn, thinking quickly, depressed the control for her scanning tool, letting a multitude of high-powered microwaves to burst forth from the emitter in her palm instantaneously. The waves, directed towards the electronics in the area, positively resonated joyously as they surged en route to wreak havoc wherever they had been sent off to.

The Legionnaire abruptly halted in place, frozen and statuesque. An alarm blared from his vocabulator, a series of two notes squealing unconsciously in a panic. All eight of the cyborg's optics flickered in an uncontrollable series, alternating between four on the left side and four on the right side of his head. The gears and hydraulics powering the Legionnaire's movements squealed to a stop as if they had suddenly rusted into place. For a brief moment, silence befell the lower deck.

Then, all of a sudden, the Legionnaire grasped at his head and gave a high-pitched shriek, a long howling note as all of his electronics went haywire. The feedback was sending excess electrical signals back into his brain, overloading many of his basic processes and causing a total and cataclysmic lockup. Staggering from side to side, the cyborg bellowed and gnashed as he smashed into the walls, trying to clear his head. His optics had now been completely filled with junk tabs, blinding him and strobing so rapidly that his nerves were about to seize up.

In tremendous pain, the Legionnaire sank to his knees, retching even though the remains of his esophagus was not designed to allow any nutrients to pass back up. Deaf, half-blind, and completely disoriented, the still cooking Legionnaire crawled on the floor, grasping at whatever lay in reach, still lashing out in his desperation to reach his target.

Roahn had finally clambered into the pod at this point and had thrown down the crash harness above her shoulders, being just barely tall enough to be kept from sliding around. The last image she had of the freighter before the pod doors slammed shut was the Legionnaire, looking forlornly at them in a mixture of pain and regret. The creatures eyes pulsated and it looked like he was about to reach out to them. A hand, draped in flame, stretched out one last time to pry his quarries from their destiny.

Yet destiny's wheels were already in motion—too strong for the Legionnaire to halt them in their tracks.

The heavy doors of the pod smashed shut with a ferocious clang. Six separate bangs then reverberated within the pod, a prelude to a terrifying shudder and a vague tugging sensation that began to pull at the bodies of the two individuals inside the pod. The craft had launched.

They were away.

As they tumbled, the bright glow from the nearby planet's atmosphere wafted into the pod, the curvature of the world nearly a straight line as the gravity pulled them in further and further. The pod soon began to straighten as it entered the atmosphere, sending micro-shudders throughout its construction. The interior of the pod started to grow a little hot, but the thermal shielding was compensating for the immense friction of reentry nicely.

Regardless, Roahn clenched her hands upon the safety harness, shaking within its protective embrace, and tried so very hard not to scream.

Next to her, Shepard, who had been keeping his eyes shut the whole time, opened his mouth in a soundless roar, letting the infernal noise of the atmosphere scraping off the surface of the pod fill his mind, drowning out the tender whispers that had been steadily growing there for the last few minutes.

A lingering reminder…

A loving voice…

All he heard was his miserable failure.

" _I did get better, Shepard. I got you."_

" _A young woman gets rescued by a dashing commander who lets her join his crew and then goes off to save the galaxy? How could she possibly develop any kind of interest in him?"_

" _Wherever you go, I'm with you."_

" _I have a home. Come back to me."_

The words tumbled together in his brain in a soupy mess. They blended, coalesced, and repeated themselves endlessly, to Shepard's chagrin. Within this damnable escape pod, his fever dream, bolstered by the growing heat, scaled in intensity, eagerly slipping through the cracks in his armor now that his weaknesses were exposed.

 _Roahn…_ he wanted to cry out, but his jaw was locked shut. _I'm sorry!_

* * *

 **A/N: We are now growing closer and closer to the final act of this story. I really hope all of you have either enjoyed or have been enraptured by _Cenotaph_ so far. I'd really love to hear your thoughts on the progress of the story, not to mention your thoughts on this chapter as well. As before, I'm always open to thoughtful feedback. Me, I'm just happy to have gotten this far. This is the part that I really enjoy.**

 **Playlist:**

 **The Last Night: "A Small Measure of Peace" by Hans Zimmer from the film _The Last Samurai_**

 **Radiation: "Welcome to the Real World" by Hans Zimmer and Andrew Kawczynski from the film _Chappie_**

 **Shepard is Released/Sneaking Through Ship: "Escape from Hellgate" by James Horner from the film _Avatar_**

 **Cyborg on Fire/The Escape: "Apollo 11 Launch" by Justin Hurwitz from the film _First Man_**


	18. Chapter 18: Terra Paradiso

[THE BELOW CONVERSATION WAS RECORDED FOLLOWING THE HEARING OF ERICH KOENIG. THE INVOLVED PARTIES AND LOCATION OF THE CONVERSATION HAVE BEEN SUMMARILY REDACTED.]

[PRESENT SPEAKERS WILL HEREBY BE REFERRED TO AS "UNKNOWN 1" AND "UNKNOWN 2." ABBREVIATIONS WILL BE DISPLAYED AS "UN. 1" AND "UN. 2"]

" _Give it to me straight. Koenig is so screwed, isn't he?"  
_ UN. 1

" _He's fucked six ways 'til Sunday. What a dreadful performance that was. No way is he getting out of that without losing shareholder confidence."  
_ UN. 2

" _Not to mention he won't be able to escape scrutiny from the Alliance. Many senators are already feeling the pressure from their constituents to dump Chimera, or so the reports go."  
_ UN. 1

" _The reports are correct. Rather lousing timing for Koenig, all in all. The public always likes it when they have a cause to rally behind, and with it being an election year it's not going to reflect well on anyone who supports Chimera. Protesting PMCs is the latest and greatest trend. The public will stump for the Alliance to reconsider their contract with Chimera. By god, the Alliance will certainly do so, even without the help of the mob."  
_ UN. 2

" _But the Alliance will certainly still need provisional support for its militaries, yes? Chimera's lousy governance notwithstanding, they have been providing a valuable function. Would it not make sense to consider any alternatives in the interim?"_  
UN. 1

" _Is this the part where you're going to start to pitch me on your services,_ [REDACTED] _?"_  
UN. 2

" _Do you think there will be a better time? Someone has to pick up the slack,_ [REDACTED] _, and if that certain someone can promise a valuable and secure infrastructure along with a guarantee to be less… idiotic in the public spotlight, then I would personally consider such a prospect to be rather… lucrative."  
_ UN. 1

" _After what I just saw in that room, a rather routine partnership without any drama could be just the kind of palate-cleanser that we could use. All right, give me the rundown. I'm listening."  
_ UN. 2

* * *

The escape pod had gouged a two-mile long scar into the ground, uprooting trees, shrubbery, and large patches of grass as the metallic coffin's slide had been slowed by the damp soil. Plowing into the surface of the planet at a shade over three hundred miles an hour would ordinarily be a fatal occurrence, in all sense of physics, but it was only through the grace of the powerful inertia dampeners inside the escape pod that had allowed the two occupants inside to survive with only a few minor bruises and little else in the way of injuries.

Five seconds of scraping along the earth caused a catastrophic array of ripping and tearing noises to reverberate throughout the interior of the pod, but it was only after that tiny window did the noise cease. There was the distinct motion of the pod settling into its final position at a twenty-degree angle to the ground, rocking ever so slightly, while the superheated exterior hissed angrily as it began to take in the humid conditions of the planet.

The wildlife, having previously fallen silent with the impromptu and deafening arrival of the pod dropping out of the sky, cautiously began to chirp and chitter again. Normality gradually returned to the area.

The door at the rear of the pod then creaked open, thick hinges supporting the weight of the heavy threshold. A helmeted head adorned with a blue hood then poked out from the opening. Roahn, after taking a moment to ascertain the distance to the ground and finding the space to be adequate, did a clumsy hop out of the pod, landing rather heavily into the mud. A fall like that would cause a good amount of pain for most people, but Roahn was at the young age where such discomforts could be easily ignored due to her rather significant durability. She bent her knees as she hit the ground and doubled over for a second before rising up to get her bearings while her boots sank an inch into the muck, panting, and looking quite angry.

There was a groaning sound and Shepard, his face rather pained, similarly peeked his head out from the pod and examined the drop of what had to be a couple of meters down to the ground, taking note of how deep his daughter's boots had depressed themselves into the mud as she had leapt out. Not in any shape to make a dramatic jump out and land gracefully upon the ruined earth like a cat, Shepard clumsily sat down upon the lip of the pod and slowly slid his way off until his legs were dangling only a couple of feet above the ground. With a lasting sigh, Shepard mustered a tiny push, scooting himself the last few inches out from the pod, and his feet finally hit the mud. His knees buckled as they took the impact and he nearly went down—it was only by throwing out a hand to catch himself within the narrow valley did he manage to prevent himself from face-planting into the sludge like an imbecile.

Shepard winced as both his legs and his back twinged like mad, as if someone had rudely shoved red-hot pokers into those areas. He struggled not to curse out loud and merely resorted to rubbing at the affected areas to mitigate the discomfort as best he could. Damn these withdrawal symptoms. They were relentless and systemic in their assault. The Entolimod he had been taking over the years had done its job in mitigating some of the radiation he had accumulated in his bloodstream, but it had clearly taken such a hold on him now that he had become accustomed to its effects. It would take a great deal for him to be fully weaned off this medication… _if_ he was willing to be weaned off it, that is.

Radiating heat warmed his back—warping off the skin of the capsule. Shepard blithely turned around to behold the pod sticking from the ground at an angle, steam rising in long wisps, curling into gentle spirals as it rose into the air. The front of the vessel was blackened and scorched from reentry. The escape pods were designed to withstand punishing environments and crushing gravitational forces—hell, they were built to crash into a planet and have its occupants survive—but even so, Shepard found it miraculous that a construction as simple as this pod had been designed and implemented well enough to make sure that it would accomplish its task correctly. Since he was still alive, he had to concede that the manufacturers had done their jobs properly.

Looking up, Shepard half-expected to bear witness to the frigate that he had just been unceremoniously ejected out of, but he was rewarded with just a clear view of the morning sky, no artificial objects marring the unpolluted expanse above. Bright blue heavens, rimmed with starlight. A healthy sun glimmered near the horizon, already evaporating the dew upon the grass.

The Chimera ship was nowhere in sight. Odd. Shepard would have figured that any commander worth his salt would have remained in orbit and have at least sent down a few shuttles to reacquire escapees from the craft. The fact that he saw no sign of Chimera's presence was puzzling, though a welcome relief.

Shepard then remembered that, in the midst of fleeing his captors, he had watched the frigate abruptly shift into an FTL jump just moments after they had been launched in the escape pod. As they had been buffeting through the atmosphere, Roahn had explained that she expected the sudden FTL ignition to occur—while she had been rummaging through the ship's security systems back when she had been trying to break her father out, she had programmed the frigate to make a short FTL hop after a pod was expelled from it to give them time to escape.

 _What a clever girl_ , Shepard had thought at the time and he meant it. Roahn did not have to tell them that, in the time it would take the Legionnaire and Chimera to stop their FTL jump and make it back to whatever system they had originally been dumped into, Shepard and Roahn would have been on the planet long enough to elude their pursuers. If the frigate managed to make it back to the orbit of the planet, Chimera would have to compensate for the world's rotational forces as well as its gravitational shift around the sun, not to mention that they would have to take into account the amount of ground Shepard and Roahn would cover from their landing site in order to properly get an estimate of their new location.

The point was, the ball was firmly in Shepard's court now.

As for his daughter…

Shepard peered upwards, finally mustering enough strength to push the pain back down a bit, just in time to see Roahn disappear past the crest of a nearby hill. She did not even spare her father a wayward glance behind her, not even caring if he was following. Shepard knew why Roahn was so sullen—the reason was quite obvious—and he started stumbling his way towards his daughter, desperate to mend the divide that had cracked between them.

This divide had repeatedly split and reformed itself over the years. It was now a lingering scar, careful to scab over, unwilling to let itself become fully healed in case it would be broken open once more.

"Roahn!" he called, but it was with a half-hearted effort as he fully expected (and was swiftly proven right) that Roahn would not respond to his calls at all. Crap. Guess he would have to actually catch up to her.

In his current state, that was going to be a bit of a challenge.

Trying to hide his grimace, Shepard stumbled forward, pulling his feet from the black mud that had been exposed when the escape pod had skidded over the ground. He took a few seconds to get his bearings. They had landed in a tiny valley bordered by ridges so shallow that they were barely three times his actual height. A thickly wooded forest, filled with ancient and gnarled trees, had taken up residence in the middle of the valley, stretching as far as the ridged borders rolled across the landscape. The air was moist and damp near here, and judging by the dark color of the soil, rather rich in nutrients. Very fertile land here for farming, Shepard considered, but this really did not help in determining exactly which world they had landed on.

Despite the slight nature of the valley, Shepard's field of view was still restricted by the grassy knolls that Roahn had disappeared behind. Perhaps getting to high ground would allow him a better view. Shepard was not all that keen at expending some of his energy to crest the valley, but frankly, he had little choice in the matter.

It felt like he had just scaled Everest by the time Shepard clambered up to the valley's ridge, but what he saw stretching out before him proceeded to steal what little breath he had left.

The light from the morning sun might have been skewing with the moment but the vivid green colors of the dense farmland seemed to just pop out in Shepard's eyes. Vague multicolored rings skewed within the liquid of his sclera and he had to hold up a hand to shield himself from the glare, but he still was rather impressed at being able to take stock of the thousands of acres of what was obviously developed acreage that stood before him. There was no way to tell exactly what was being grown down there, but at least this was a sign that the world they had crashed on had some semblance of civilization upon it.

That semblance only became more pronounced as Shepard, now that his eyes had adjusted to the light of the sun, was able to pick out at least a dozen metallic spires that seemed to stick out from the very ground many dozens of miles off in the distance. Interspaced skyscrapers that seemed to glimmer a pure white as the illumination passed through immaculate and purified skies untarnished by abusive environmental habits. Shepard recognized these structures as arcologies, hundreds of stories high, that were responsible for housing a significant portion of a developing planet's population. Fabricated off-world, these arcologies could be set up on a planet ripe for colonization without the colonists having to expand any energy in creating an infrastructure from scratch.

While this was a sight common with most Alliance colonies, it quickly clicked with Shepard that this particular view of mobile structures towering over an idyllic paradise had a certain familiarity with him. He had been beholden to such a particular sight a couple times in his life already, one that held a very important place within his memories.

"Is this…" Shepard uttered to himself as he bent over, hands upon his knees while he gazed out towards the warmly colored horizon in disbelief, _"…Eden Prime?"_

Eden Prime. One of the first human colonies that had been established ever since the Charon relay had been discovered in the Sol system. The relative proximity of this planet combined with a very fertile biosphere drew colonists in droves once the very first ships began to take off from Earth. Eden Prime had always been advertised as an untarnished paradise comparable to what Earth must have been like before overpopulation and pollution had soured its environment. The world was located within the Goldilocks zone of its sun, just like Earth, and possessed a very mild climate that was already coated with greenery, meaning that there would be no need to mount severe terraforming operations. Agriculture was the main industry on this planet, although tourism also brought in a healthy dose of income, as there were many a prospecting traveler who wished to take advantage of the idyllic views and the unspoiled natural splendor. After all, with nearly every inch of coastline on Earth urbanized to the nth degree, as well as natural parks such as the Grand Canyon and Yellowstone being overrun by the population sprawl, Eden Prime was as close to paradise that could be imagined by most.

Now, by what had to be a massive coincidence, Shepard had once again found himself upon this planet. Either fate was quite unimaginative by having him appear on Eden Prime once again or he just had the oddest luck known to man.

Was it really luck or were there other forces at play here?

Well, at least Shepard was able to catch a fleeting glimpse of his daughter, now that he was hanging out upon the valley crest. She was stomping down a dirt road several meters away, still clearly frustrated and lost in her thoughts. Roahn, with each step, was widening the gap between her and her father. At this rate, Shepard would never catch her in time.

"Roahn!" Shepard tried again as he made to shuffle his way down the other side of the hill to reach the road.

Unfortunately, Shepard's clumsy state caused him to misjudge where to place his foot for the descent which came to a head when Shepard partially and unintentionally stepped into a hole dug by some sort of burrowing creature. His balance upset, he whirled his arms frantically before tipping all the way over. There was no time to cry out as he tumbled down the hill. His uncontrolled roll did not injure him, but it did make him devilishly dizzy, not to mention it left grass streaks on his forehead and clothes. Green clippings lodged in Shepard's hair, giving him a rather disheveled look.

Feeling completely defeated, Shepard simply straightened himself as best as he could while he now sat upon the slope of the hill, subject to watch the sun rise over the plantations. Tired, sore, and positively at his wit's end, Shepard sighed bitterly as a small part of him wished that he could be allowed to let grief take him already so that he could finally scream out his frustrations instead of keeping them bottled up for so long. But the tears refused to fall. He had already expended his allotment back up on the Chimera freighter. He felt numb again, immune to the urge to simply cry.

But cry for whom? For his wife? His daughter?

"Roahn…" Shepard whispered, unsure of what to do.

A rustling sound caught his attention and Shepard jumped as he realized that Roahn was standing right next to him, having come over after hearing her father take a tumble. Shepard blinked several times in rapid succession. He had not even heard the girl make her way over here. He _must_ have been very distracted for that to have happened.

Shepard was painfully aware that he could see his pathetic visage reflected in the blue stretch of Roahn's visor. His own daughter was looking at him in a mixture of rage, anguish, and incredulity that was so potent to him he could feel his insides twisting uncomfortably. Roahn's unblinking eyes, quivering in disappointment, grew watery and powerful the more she looked at him. Shepard imagined himself withering underneath her accusatory gaze, knowing that whatever she was thinking of him right now, it was probably well deserved.

Father and daughter spent nearly a minute just staring at the other upon that hill, not saying a single word. Shepard was too nervous to even utter a syllable to the girl, fearful of what she might do in response. Roahn stood ramrod straight, an arm's length away from her father, her hands slowly bunching up into fists as her chest lightly shook with her frantic breathing.

There was only so much silence that Shepard was willing to let pass by and after a certain amount of time, he had finally had enough. "I know that you're probably mad—"

 _*Slap*_

Shepard's head barely shunted to the side, a stinging sensation now spreading across his cheek, more confused than hurt. He gave a slow blink, his brain still working to comprehend exactly what had happened. Shepard knew what had just transpired, but the reality of the situation was so unbelievable that he was having trouble wrapping his head around it.

Lightly touching at his cheek, Shepard rotated his head as he now observed Roahn with her hand raised, ready to deliver another blow to his face. The girl's eyes were large and fearful behind her visor, her voice now nearing convulsing noises as she started to hyperventilate. Shepard had no idea how to address his daughter in the wake of that horrible action—he would never have thought that Roahn would slap him before. Similarly, Roahn never thought that she would slap her father, either. The silence was allowed to linger as the two of them froze in place, flabbergasted by the occurrence.

Roahn recovered first and, with a tiny cry, slapped Shepard once more, her palm making a soft _crack_ as she hit her father's face. Shepard barely flinched from the blow—it did not hurt him all that much. Most of his concentration was being put into trying to interpret Roahn's raw anger and terror, recognizing the horrors that were striving to be released within the girl.

Potent urges fighting to make themselves known. Succumbing to such desires could only be described as blissful.

Fast sobs escaped Roahn's throat as she mustered her courage and slapped Shepard several more times in succession. The human merely bore the smacks with a reserved expression of acceptance, yearning to pull his own contrition and remorse from the pain that Roahn brought him. He welcomed the fight she demonstrated. He wanted to finally be called out for his mistakes, to have his own failures screamed back into his face. If this was the punishment that had been lying in store for him for the past couple years, then it was about time that it showed its face.

Roahn was now openly weeping as she continued to strike her father. Her face was wet with tears once again. She bawled as she moved her hand forward, each blow gradually weakening. It was as if she was being disturbed by her father's demonstrated reticence—she did not want to hit Shepard mindlessly, like an animal. She wanted him to tell her to stop! Why was he letting her _do_ this to him?! This… this felt _wrong_. But still quietus clung to Shepard like a disease, and Roahn continued to cry until she could bear it no longer.

"You… l-l- _liar!_ " she howled as she shoved at Shepard's shoulder, having expended all her energy from her slaps. "Liar! Liar! Liar!"

The girl punctuated each of her cries with continued shoves, damn near inconsolable. Shepard just rocked from Roahn's demonstrated force until he realized just how weak she was getting as she assaulted him. Still adhering to his silence, Shepard just calmly reached out and grasped at Roahn's wrists gently, halting her in place.

"You're right," he finally offered his daughter. "You're completely right."

Relieved from punishing Shepard, Roahn was afforded a moment to finally halt in place, to breathe. That was when the life finally burned out from her. The little quarian's knees buckled and she collapsed at the side of the road, her body partially laying in the grass. Sorrowful wheezes came from her vocabulator and she clutched at herself, her lungs feeling raw and ragged from her cries.

Roahn moaned, "You said that you were going to tell me who you really were. That you… you would… you would be honest with me. Y-You lied to… to my face." The girl's head must have felt several pounds heavier as she visibly struggled to look at Shepard. "You were never going to tell me what really happened to mom, were you? _Were you?!_ "

After waiting a bit, Shepard just gave a tender nod, his eyes shut tight in shame. There was no sense in trying to talk his way out of this, not when his daughter was two steps away from losing it completely.

"I would have hoped that you would have _never_ found out," he whispered, voice hoarse.

The girl just gave a keen and lowered her head, the truth slashing at her like daggers.

Watching Roahn, Shepard could feel the distress building up inside him like a tumorous mass. All he had hoped to achieve now seemed to have been for naught. The hate was overwhelming Roahn so much that she did not know how to act. She was temporarily paralyzed, too shocked to even be thinking rationally. Never taking his eyes off of her, Shepard could only grow more and more anguished as he recognized the agony that consumed his daughter.

"I don't even know _how_ I could have told you," he murmured, finally tearing his eyes away so that he could behold the ground, which offered precious sanctum. "I believed that… if… if I had told you how Tali died… you would hate me for the rest of your life. I thought that I would lose you forever, all because I made a mistake that will follow me for all time."

"A… a _mistake?!_ " the girl raged as her fingers ripped at the ground savagely. "Is that what this is? You… you killed _mom_ , you… you bastard! You _killed_ her because you were too stupid to realize what you had done!"

Shepard took the abuse sagely, absorbing it within his own reserves of bundled emotions, buried deep down within him. Yet a lick of indignant flame speared from the embers that simmered inside him, stoking his anguish. "I _was_ stupid. I _do_ deserve your hate because I've only presented myself as a pitiful and abhorrent creature to you." Shepard's gaze then turned sinister and sharp. "But don't you _ever_ think that you had to suffer more than me, young lady. You may have lost your mother… but I lost my _wife_ too. That will never compare to the knowledge that I alone was responsible for her death. That rests on _my_ shoulders, not yours. _I_ caused the death of my best friend, a woman I had known for thirteen years, all because I did not realize the infection that had inhabited my body."

"I… I… I _should_ hate you with every fiber of my being," Roahn sobbed.

Everything was unraveling faster than Shepard could hope to stop it, but if he had even the faintest shred of the ability to stem the flow of despair, he deliberately did not reach out to try to grasp it. He welcomed his imminent collapse, his mind buckling from the weight of his defeat. Final and permanent.

"You couldn't possibly hate me more than I have been hating myself for the past two years, Roahn. Did you ever wonder why I had been trying to distance myself from you this whole time since Tali died? It's because I was terrified of the prospect of having to reveal to you what I had done to her. Every time I _looked_ at you, for god's sake, I could see _her_ , fresh in my mind. It consumed me. Tortured me. I was seeing Tali everywhere, tormenting me for what I had done. I could not stop the images, the memories from pouring forth. I had started to become punished with the realization that I had killed Tali when I was struck by a bit of clarity one day after she had passed—I decided to perform a radiological scan on myself. When I discovered just how much radiation was actually in my bloodstream… in that instant, I realized what I had done. I had found out that I had murdered my fiercest love. I had screamed, bellowed, and had torn apart the room that I had been in at the time, not just because of the revelation, but because I had committed the ultimate betrayal to my own child by taking away her parent. I had torn apart our family… and I had not even known about it until it was too late."

The girl held her head in her hands, dumbstruck beyond belief. She had grown numb after listening to her father talk, now relying on the brief breeze pulling at her frame to send her flying back to reality. Roahn was keenly aware of the blood thudding in her temples and the red edges that tugged at the ends of her vision, threatening to constrict her with a cloying and choking hold.

Roahn mustered a trembling breath. "You would have preferred to have never told me _anything_. You wanted me to go through life not being able to comprehend who you truly were and what you did to mom. So many things you wanted to keep from me… and you really thought _that_ was the best decision?!" Shaking her head in derision, her teary eyes now blankly appraised the glowing horizon as Shepard became a blur in the corner of her eye. "You were never even going to tell me that you _loved_ me, were you?"

There had never been a more grievous blow that had been dealt to Shepard before. He felt its impact pool within his gut before slowly wafting in all directions laboriously, greedily. It was hell.

"That's not true," he responded, but the words sounded pathetic even to him.

As he might have expected, Roahn did not buy his sincerity. "Do you really think that I can possibly believe anything you say anymore?"

"I would understand if you couldn't."

"Stop it!" Roahn raged as she pummeled the grassy knoll with a fist. "Don't act all contrite and gracious to me! You don't get to do that! We were supposed to be a family. A _family_ , dad! Did you ever realize what that ever meant to you? Or have you never noticed that all I've wanted was to have a normal life with you—I've had to withstand year after year of being envious of the fathers that my own friends had in their lives. I… you don't understand. I _wanted_ that too! I should have been able to trust you immediately and earnestly ever since I was born! And you… you've robbed me of even that."

Miserably, Roahn continued to stare at the fields of pure greenery as they began to be warmed by the rising sun. The girl drew her knees to her chest as she watched the fertile land become brightened before her, still refusing to look at her father.

"I still remember… the days when we were all together," Roahn said wistfully. "You, me, and mom. They feel like a lifetime ago, but I can remember them so clearly. All I keep coming back to are the times that we all walked on the beach. Just the three of us, wading in the waves, staying out long after dinner and watching the sun set, waiting for the night to come. We would sit in the cool sand and you would point out the stars to me. Of course, mom would be holding onto you the entire time, unable to take her eyes off you for she was so happy."

Shepard nodded the whole while, also able to recall what Roahn was referring to, impressed by her ability to recollect those moments. He did not speak, courteously allowing his daughter to speak her mind to the full, fearful that he would derail the whole scene if he uttered the wrong word. Hell, a single meaningless syllable out of his mouth would produce an undesirable effect in the girl, most likely.

The quarian shook her head in disgust. "Had I known just how precious those days were… before I lost mom… _and_ you… I would have tried to have been happier. I would have grasped onto those wonderful moments and savored them so that they would always be in my head forever, down to the littlest detail. I would've… been a better _daughter_ , even. I don't know how, but I… I just could have been better."

"You were perfect," Shepard finally broke in, unable to contain himself any longer, consequences be damned. "There was no way that you could have been any better."

"Dad…" Roahn was about to protest but Shepard made such a firm cutting motion with his hand that even Roahn could see it out of the corner of her eye.

"It's always difficult to judge yourself in an impartial manner. Some days, I want to believe that I acted the way I did for all the right reasons. But I realize that… even I am prone to miscalculation. I discovered not that long ago that it's not how I am supposed to see myself, it's how others see me that I am supposed to judge whether or not I was acting like a good man should… or a good father." Shepard was also similarly looking at the plowed fields, now being able to spot the glinting lines of maglev rails that crisscrossed the planet's surface, transporting food to the major transit hubs. "Never once did I think that, when I tried to keep certain aspects of my life from you, that you would hold such... animosity towards me. I thought that I was protecting you—or imagining that I was protecting you—by withholding that information. All along I thought that I was helping you."

"A lot of good _that_ did," Roahn snarled sarcastically.

Shepard winced from the sting, but continued on, despite it feeling like his heart was being rendered in half. "I never said that I was perfect. Not even before you were born. Nearly every single action that I have made in my life has cost me dearly. Even a decision as simple as electing to destroy the Reapers ended up sacrificing the lives of all the geth in the galaxy, rendered inert by the resulting shockwave of energy. Yes, Roahn, _I'm_ the one responsible for their death—yet one more thing I have on my conscience. It's just one more thing to add to the pile of burdens that I've stocked up in my head over the years. Every terrible thing that I've done has all been collected into one shapeless mass in my head—I've been desensitized so much to it that I figured that it was easy to bundle all my regrets there and never talk about them for the rest of my life."

All was quiet for a bit but Shepard suddenly croaked out, "If it were up to me, I would add today to that pile. Every single waking second of today would have been shoved down so far deep that they would have been inextricable. I would have locked them down there, right next to the memory of the day your mother passed away. But I don't have any more privacy to my memories anymore. I can't hide them from you now, Roahn."

The stilled silence thickened in the interim, broken up finally when Roahn finally gave a derisive snort, rolling her eyes so that she could perceive the twinkling blanket of stars above her that had yet to be drowned up by the light of the sun.

"Damn you," she whispered. "Damn you for even mentioning that day." She finally turned around, filled to the brim with fury as her resentment finally had reached the zenith, unable to be contained any longer. She beheld her father willingly, a nameless violence working its way into her body, driving forth its malevolence to spew bile into her words. "You don't deserve to talk about what happened, after what you did to her."

Shepard's own anger made a quiet surge, but it was with a frigid blast rather than a plume of flame like Roahn's.

"You don't get to dictate what we can or cannot talk about, Roahn. I am still your father."

"The father who _murdered_ my mother."

"It was an accident!"

"An _accident?!_ " Roahn shrieked, appalled so badly that she jumped to her feet in an instant. She shook a fist inches from Shepard's nose, wrestling with the decision whether she had the courage to slug her father in the face this time around. "How long had you been irradiating her? _Huh?!_ Why did it take you so long to realize that you had been exposing her for years? Is that sort of thing an accident?!"

" _I did… not… know!_ " Shepard finally roared, the sound lingering long enough for an echo to take it into its embrace, sending it across the plain, lightly ringing as it travelled. After the scenery had become reticent, Shepard found that, miraculously, his tears were poised to fall again. The well that had dried up was full once more. "How could I have known?" was his muted defense, his feeble plea to his daughter.

Forgiveness was not even a consideration for Roahn at this moment. All she saw when she looked at Shepard was just a pathetic wretch.

"You really don't know much, do you?" she spat to her father. "You don't even know how I felt. The day before mom passed, I remember her gathering us all into her room to say goodbye. She was so tired… so weak… but she used all her energy just to _struggle_ to appear happy. Even at the end, she just wanted to be happy with all of us, like everything was perfectly normal. She then talked to me alone after we had all spoken a bit, then she had you all to herself after that. Her death was so peaceful, it was as if she had simply gone to sleep."

Shepard, unable to tear his attention away from the cutting words that spewed from Roahn's mouth, just covered his own mouth with a hand, tears flowing over his fingers in warm waterfalls.

"The next morning," Roahn continued, "I woke up and looked into your room to see if mom was awake. But… there was just the most terrible sight awaiting me. I stood in the doorway and saw _you_ , dad, crying over mom's body. She wasn't moving. She was… very still. You had your head buried in the blankets of the bed. Your hands were clutching mom's limp one. Even at a distance, I could see that mom's eyes were closed behind her visor. No had to tell me what happened, I knew then that mom had died sometime in the night."

" _Roahn_ …" Shepard hoarsely tried to say through his own crying.

But the girl proceeded on, her voice sounding bolstered as she proceeded almost robotically while she ignored all her father's attempts to speak. "All feeling left my body in that moment. I couldn't breathe. I couldn't think. I couldn't even stand up. I collapsed just outside the hallway, with the image of my dead mom in my head. I waited in that hallway for hours, simply shell-shocked, half-expecting you to finally come through that door and comfort me, to be there to tell me that everything was going to be all right and that the galaxy would not come to an end. But…" Roahn deeply inhaled, "…you never came. You stayed in that room with mom the whole time… and you never even noticed me. It was like you didn't even know I existed. I was sitting in that hall for almost the whole day until Shala'Raan came in to check up on us. From that point on, I was a _footnote_ to you. I was not important at all in your head. On that day, I lost you both, but you never even admitted guilt until now. So, tell me, are you still going to call your negligence an _accident_ or are you just going to create another memory to add to your pile of burdens?"

That did it for Shepard. The human broke down into heavy sobs while covering his face so that Roahn would not have to see such a sorry sight. His hands covered his eyes and mouth desperately, fruitlessly attempting to stem the flow of tears, but they gurgled impassively through his fingers. The ever consolidating guilt that compounded upon his body pummeled at him like he was a rag doll. His fears all coalesced and subjugated him to a mass of attacks upon him, both in mind and in body, because he deeply knew that his daughter was right.

If Shepard had held any mental images of himself painting him as a good man, they had all disintegrated into the void of nothingness by now.

Now look. He couldn't even muster an answer to Roahn's question. How could he possibly call himself a good man after this?

What horrible person would neglect his daughter for so long? How could he have never realized it? All his years of silence and mental withdrawal, all having been done in vain. Useless. Purposeless. They had only served to enhance Roahn's hate for him. All he had wanted was to protect her, but what had he been trying to protect Roahn from?

Himself?

God, that was it. He had finally figured it out. All along, his treatment of Roahn was not borne out of a misguided love, but of an inborn fear. The fear that she would truly discover what a monster he was. Because the biggest danger to the girl was not of the galaxy and the hidden menaces lurking in the shadows… it had been living under her roof the whole time.

The horrors from his genocide of the geth was only overshadowed by his uxoricide. It was as if his very hands had been dipped in Tali's blood, boiling and eating away at his flesh to sizzle at the knobs of white bone underneath. Devil incarnate. A villain pretending to be a hero. Everything had been undone when Tali had died and he had been too stupid not to notice.

His sobs turned into howling wails. The sounds of his lamenting eradicated the nearby noises of the fauna, quieting in response to the hellish noises. Shepard dissolved in the wake of his tears, knowing that he was guilty. There could be no place lower that he could possibly sink to. In one of these mad instances, Shepard momentarily wished that he could die instead of having to be subjugated to this treatment from Roahn. Anything else he could withstand… except confronting his past.

For one singular second, Commander Shepard had wished for death.

He had taken that wish back almost immediately, appalling himself at his own selfishness. Still he continued to sob uncontrollably, helpless and consumed by his grief, too overcome to be able to even look at his daughter.

As the human continued to cry, Roahn simply gazed upon him with a growing astonishment of her own. Her father had gotten tearful in front of her before but… this was something else. Something completely different. This was no simple recollection, but pure and unbridled _agony_. She was witnessing the horrific destruction of a man's soul right in front of her.

The strength of her previous blows were brief gusts of wind compared to the impact her words had upon her father.

There had been a time, Roahn recalled, following Tali's death where she had repeatedly wished that it had been Shepard who had passed away instead of her mother. For days on end Roahn had murmured this invocation to herself, fantasizing of a life where Tali had lived and where Shepard had died. But seeing Shepard now, feeble and vulnerable, finally caused her to give pause to that terrible wish. Guiltily, Roahn stared down at her hands, aghast that she had been practically praying for her own father to have died at one point in her life. Choosing whether someone lived or died… a decision like that weighed so heavily upon her mind that it seemed to cause her to sink into the earth.

Still… to even think of trading her father for her mother…

Who was she to make such a decision, to go against fate?

They had both lost the same thing, together. No creature could be more piteous than the one sitting before Roahn now. His wife—her mother—had gone from Shepard's mistake… but he had shown remorse in the end. He had repented, and even though he had attempted to conceal his crime, he did not deny it when confronted.

 _Love is insanity_ , his words echoed in Roahn's head. _He was trying to tell me all along._

 _My father._

" _Roahn_ ," a woman's voice beckoned within the deep recesses of her mind. " _Please_ …"

 _Mom?_

A messianic bolt seemed to split Roahn right down the middle. Eyelids fluttering, the girl swayed as she stood in place, a pure moment of lucidity spearing right to the middle of her soul, piercing and burning. In her fervor, a soothing tranquility reached out, guiding her. Telling her where to go.

" _My darling… believe…"_ the voice sang before vanishing, not even leaving an echo behind.

The girl reached out, her hand unnaturally still, and gently placed her palm upon Shepard's head. Roahn could not explain why she did that, only that it seemed like the right thing to do. A spark of invisible energy seemed to shoot into her body as she made contact, and she closed her eyes respectfully as Shepard started to breathe a little more deeply. The quarian continued to stand over her father, palm on his head, as the human before her kept his head angled towards the ground, not feeling worthy enough to look her in the eye.

"' _He loves you more than you could ever imagine_ ,'" Roahn's voice, deathly quiet, nevertheless cracked open the sky. "Those were her last words to me. Even then, mom wanted me to understand. To believe. I think she probably knew what happened to her in the end… and still she begged me to love you. I didn't listen to her then. But… for her sake… I'm ready to listen now."

Bitterly, Shepard edged out one last sigh before he finally straightened, his eyes rimmed red. He wiped his stinging cheeks with the back of a hand. "You deserve someone better than me," he mustered, finally making eye contact with Roahn.

"I don't _have_ better," Roahn pointed out. "I only have _you_."

The ghost of a smile nearly graced Shepard's features from the familiarity of such a statement. In the end, he held back, but he was nearly drawn back again into his memories once more.

"She could never hate you," Roahn continued. "Never. All this time she wanted her family to be together after she was gone. And…" the girl mustered a trembling breath, "…and I don't want to let her down."

"She was worth two of me, easily. I did not deserve someone like Tali my life. You have to believe me, Roahn, that every single day I have wished that I could have taken her place. She deserved to be here, not me."

"But she's _not_ here. It's just you, dad."

Shepard just rubbed at his beard firmly. "It shouldn't have been this way at all. You needed her so much more. Hell, I know you loved her more than you loved me. I mean, look at me. I'm a broken husk of a man. Nothing in here that's worth saving. I didn't do a good enough job, Roahn."

Roahn swallowed painfully, her entire body urging her to flee, what with the sensation of fizzing bile in her stomach adding fuel to the fire. Yet, despite the smorgasbord of stimuli pointing her in one direction, she stood her ground and continued to pour her energies into confronting her father.

"You still have time," her distant voice tumbled past her vocabulator.

"Do I?" was Shepard's half-hearted reply. "How many chances can one person get?"

"Mom saw something in you that was worth saving. Just once, I would like to see that."

Roahn finally shifted her feet and walked over so that she was sitting next to Shepard on the hill. Together, the two could now stare out towards the green horizon, brightly lit now that the sun was at a clearly higher angle than before. Leaves from the trees rustled in the growing breeze. Even through Roahn's olfactory filters, she could smell the hint of thick vegetation and even a faint whiff of fruit.

"I'm not saying that I'm forgiving you," she emphasized as she looked off in the distance. "I just can't give up on you because that's not what mom would've wanted." After a minute, Roahn finally turned her head to glance over at Shepard. "If you don't mind me asking… what were her last words to you?"

"To _me?_ " Shepard's eyebrows rose in surprise. "She simply said… ' _I'll be waiting for you.'_ "

The cavity of silence consumed them both once more, too overcome to say anything else for a while. Simply basking in the warmth from the sun and the cool zephyrs that skimmed across the land, father and daughter took stock of their surroundings and found that, of all the worlds they had visited together, this was perhaps the most peaceful.

They could have enjoyed the view a while longer, but neither of them was properly wired with patience in mind. Fidgety from their solemn heart-to-heart that had nearly left them breathless from the emotional exertion, Roahn and Shepard were just about ready to move on, to give their minds something else to concentrate on instead of being able to wallow in their own misery, feeding off the other before they would inevitably snap.

"We should probably look for a town, huh?" Shepard finally murmured, checking his chronometer for clarification. "Those arcologies over in the distance are probably our best bet."

Next to him, Roahn dimly nodded. "That's probably a good idea," she agreed.

Shrugging, Shepard staggered to his feet, hiding his winces as best as he could—the side effects from his medication were still eagerly ramping up the assault on his body. The pain was manageable at this stage, though. He no longer required any assistance in walking anywhere. He had built up enough determination and strength to overcome that obstacle.

Gesturing down the dirt road, in the direction of the maglev rails, Shepard nudged his head to emphasize their new objective to Roahn, who had similarly risen to her feet as well. Together they appraised the other thoughtfully, masking their facial expressions accordingly, as if the impacts from their conversation had never materialized at all.

"So, shall we?" Shepard gestured.

Finally, they proceeded onwards down the beaten path.

* * *

 _Berlin, Earth_

From the time that he had barged out from the skycar in his security-laden motorcade, to being spewed upwards in one of the many glass elevators in Chimera's headquarters, and finally to storming his way through the top level of the gigantic building, Raynor Larsen kept the same deeply severe and thoroughly enraged expression upon his face the entire time. He rudely shouldered aside staff who got in his way as he stalked towards the end of the main hall, even causing one hapless fellow to drop his datapad upon the tile floor, cracking it.

The receptionist to the main office saw him coming a mile away and stood from her desk, aghast, about to try and slow him down but Larsen held up a singular finger and fiercely shook his head, shutting her up before she had even uttered a word. With the woman cowed, Larsen had not even broken his stride by the time he reached the double doors made out of translucent and very heavy glass. With his characteristic firm grip, Larsen grasped the oversized handles to the doors and savagely yanked them open.

The first thing that Larsen noticed was the obnoxious blare of what was apparently music from some old genre that he struggled to recall was dubbed as "hip-hop." Whatever it was, it was an affront to his ears and he instinctively squinted his eyes as a response to the agonizing music. Apparently those double-doors must have been soundproofed if he had not been able to hear this trash from down the hall.

At the far end of the room, behind a tidy Scandinavian-style desk, was Erich Koenig, with his feet kicked up upon the table, hands folded over his lap, as a video upon his holo-console blared on, impassive to the interruptions. An empty bottle of Hennessy graced the desk, obviously having been drunk before Larsen had barged his way inside. Koenig looked surprised to see Larsen and he shot bolt upright as the senator stomped in his direction, apparently not at all prepared to entertain guests.

" _Oooh, baby, look at this_ ," the video on the console blared—a woman's voice, sultry and husky with false intent. " _My husband fucks me wi—_ "

Koenig hastily slapped at his keyboard and the console quieted as the video minimized to the system tray. Larsen tried not to convey his surprise and disgust, but he found that he was consistently being disappointed by the sort of conduct that Koenig repeatedly conveyed in his presence. A CEO watching porn on company time was probably not a good indicator of their work ethic. Larsen had to bite his tongue to prevent him from making a wry comment towards that. There were other issues at hand at the moment.

"Don't you know how to _knock?_ " Koenig said, annoyed. The younger man brushed at his buttoned shirt, trying to smooth out the wrinkles to make himself look a little more presentable. When Larsen did not respond, who was choosing to silently simmer in irritation in order to provoke a reaction, Koenig, completely misreading his guest, put on a smug face and smoothed his hair as he cleared his throat. "You're probably here because of the big news, right? I just heard it over our net. Shepard captured! We've finally gotten what we wanted, Raynor. After all these years it's finally—"

"Not anymore," Larsen interrupted brusquely through clenched teeth.

Koenig gave a jerky start, caught off guard. "Uh… come again?"

" _Not… anymore_ ," he repeated in a slow tone, enunciating every syllable to ensure that Koenig could comprehend him. "Shepard's _escaped_ , you blithering idiot. As of three hours ago, he slipped his captor's clutches."

Stupidly, Koenig's eyes blinked haltingly, like he still had trouble understanding what Larsen had just said, despite the senator's obvious intimation that he was speaking to a buffoon. "That… that can't be right. I mean… I just _heard_ it. They… you… we don't have Shepard?"

Once again Larsen was returning to his oft-visited fantasy of diving across the desk to tackle and ultimately strangle Koenig out of sheer annoyance. How could someone so stupid get to such a position of power? Fucking nepotism. If it were not for Koenig's father, the only job this runt could tie down would be a mail boy in the basement.

"No," Larsen mocked nastily. "We don't _have_ Shepard anymore. Did you not listen to me? No, you shut your fucking mouth," Larsen held up a hand in a cutting motion, forcing Koenig's voice back down his throat. A vein was throbbing off in the corner of the senator's forehead as he waggled a finger at the baby-faced man sitting at the desk. "You're not going to say a goddamn word right now, you _drittsekk_. I don't want to hear you speak or I swear that I'm going to stab you in the heart with an umbrella and then press the button to open the chute with it still inside you, understand?"

Numbly, Koenig nodded, more than a tad confused.

"Right," Larsen straightened out. "We're not having a discussion over the performance of your underlings—actually, we're never going to have that sort of discussion. No, Shepard's escape is not why I'm here. This is no longer about Chimera but about _you_ , Erich. What drew me here was all because of your _appalling_ performance that has been broadcasting on all the channels for the past day."

Rudely, Larsen reached over and grasped at the holo-console with a hand, rotating it towards him. Larsen tabbed away from the porn that Koenig had been watching, ignoring the explicit images, and swiftly brought up a news site, finding the video he wanted almost immediately and playing it for his audience's benefit.

"… _what tends to work in order to preserve our cash inflow_ …" Koenig's voice burst from the speakers, the footage documenting in vivid detail, living color, of Chimera's CEO mounting a panicked defense as he sat before a senatorial committee, sweating bullets as he was being subjugated to more consternation that had ever been bestowed upon him in his life, "… _is to simply change the name of the subsidiary. It's a completely legal process and our customers don't seem to notice."_

Larsen did take note that Koenig's overall composure now was eerily similar to how he was behaving in the video, much to his pleasure. He kept his face neutral—just to scare the little runt some more.

" _Very_ convincing," Larsen snarled as he paused the video and proceeded to fast forward it a bit. "Just add some more ammo for the anti-PMC crowd, why don't you? In one fell swoop you're insulting Chimera's customers and shedding some light upon a devious legal loophole. Good fucking job, there."

"I can—" Koenig protested but all Larsen had to do was shake his head ever so slowly, causing the younger man to lose his nerve.

Koenig's voice was soon allowed to resume in the video, continuing to damn the man further. _"…the day-to-day duties of people several rungs below my level are usually never communicated up to someone in my position._ "

Larsen paused the video again with a rueful exhale. "The best CEOs in the world have cited that the key to their success was being as intimately knowledgeable about the goings-on of their company at every single level as it could be humanly possible. And your strategy was to basically admit that you're _lazy?_ Is _that_ really how you wanted to reassure the committee?"

His victim was still not able to respond as Larsen unpaused the video for a third time. ("This is the best part," Larsen had uttered rather snidely.) _"…over and over again have I withstood your snide remarks, each one delivered with the intention to brand an unflattering term upon my head… your posturing, your petty manipulations, your political trickery, all of it has defined me now into a man in possession of a quality that everyone abhors: apathy_."

"You went way off script there," Larsen now remarked in a rather casual tone, almost as if he had expended all his energy for his anger that there was only bland acceptance left over. "Did you not run your little speech by your lawyers? Aren't those the very people that were hired to protect you from your own fat mouth? Did you give every one of them the day off, or something? What were you _thinking_ , Erich? You come off in the footage as a raging lunatic, not to mention that if the media had not linked your sorry face to a man of apathy by now, your little sound bit probably did you in. Have you not heard of the Streisand Effect, you moron? Now that the word 'apathy' has come out of your mouth, that will be the only term that defines you for your entire career. And we're not even done yet!"

The video of the hearing had been playing this whole time and now the camera footage was zoomed in squarely upon Koenig's sweating face, who was not at all keeping a steady expression or holding the air of someone firmly in control of the room.

"… _there is an old idiom that resonates close to home in this case, and that idiom is: 'Better the devil you know than the devil you don't_.'"

Larsen mercifully switched the video off, taking a couple precious seconds to compose himself before he could understandably fly off the rail. "Of all the things you could have said… I… _fucking hell!_ Never before in the Senate's history has any committee had to sit through such a hearing as clear-cut as this. You just made an indirect association linking Chimera and the devil together! All you had to do was shut your mouth, be evasive in your answers, and you would have walked away unscathed. Yet, despite your task being so _simple_ … you miraculously found a way to fuck it up. Do you sort of see why I'm not at all in a good mood right now?"

Koenig just sat frozen in place. "Can I speak now?" he asked timidly.

" _Against my better judgement…_ " Larsen gritted through tightly clenched teeth.

Koenig had to spend ten seconds considering if that was a sign for him to proceed or not. "If they're saying those things about Chimera… about… about us and the devil… then that's all false, right? They're just taking everything out of context."

Larsen, nearly close to mentally checking out, threw up his hands in exasperation as he resorted to pacing around the room. "I don't get it," he muttered. "I just don't get it. How can you be the CEO of a major corporation and not have any understanding as to how the media works? There's something called ' _spin_ ,' you dipshit. What the media does is try to cater the truth, tweak it ever so slightly, that will allow it to resonate with their reader base. It doesn't matter if you didn't deliberately make any allusions to the occult or not—what matters is that the words that came out of your mouth are just enough to give birth to an alternate truth. You get that? What you meant to say and what you actually said convey two different things. You've given the alternate reality plausibility and no amount of denial on your end can ever erase that."

"I… I mean… I didn't think I did all that _bad_ , honestly."

Larsen barked a laugh. "That bad? Erich, do you even realize what you have just done? I don't even need to grab any headlines to glean any certainty for what will happen next. It's all over for you and your company. You just sank Chimera's chances for its contract renewal with the Alliance with that disastrous performance of yours. I might add, if the contract does not get renewed, that will open up Chimera to a new investigation, headed by an impartial third party. After all, if Chimera is no longer affiliated with the Alliance as its premiere military service operator, then what do they have to lose by launching an investigation?"

Continuing to pace back and forth, Larsen agonizingly brushed at his goatee, thinking while he walked. "Here's what's going to happen next. If an investigation gets launched, I will take matters into my own hands, Erich. There's no way that I'll be able to hide my involvement in Chimera's development. With the current makeup of the senate as it is, what with the constituents raising holy hell about the hiring of PMCs, I'll be crucified in public for having such an extreme conflict of interest. That cannot be allowed to happen. So, in order to distance myself from the organization, Erich, things are going to have to get rather difficult for you. Most likely, you're going to have to be the fall guy if Chimera ends up going down. And, let's be honest, it _will_ go down."

" _What?!_ " Koenig leapt to his feet, his face turning bone-white. "That's outrageous!"

"Shut up, Erich, the adult is talking!" Larsen snapped. "What you will do in the next week is simple. There is nothing you can do that could possibly rid yourself from both the public's and the government's trepidation. Nothing, except one certain action. You're going to issue a press release, stating that you will be stepping down as CEO of Chimera and will make no effort to defend yourself should the Alliance wish to issue an accounting—"

"This is bullshit!" Koenig pounded at his desk, but he merely looked like a toddler whining for one more piece of candy after dinner. "You can't tell me what to do, Larsen. I'm not going to resign just because you say so! This is _my_ company! I'm the one in charge here!"

"Yet you do not hold the controlling majority of the company and it is only because you had a limited influence were you allowed to remain in this position at all!" Larsen roared back into Koenig's face, cowing him further. "And if the very man who holds that majority should come to me for recommendations on what to do with you, you can be certain that I will not hesitate to throw you under the bus. That's no idle threat, Erich. That is a promise."

Koenig's eyes scrambled across the room, almost as if he was searching for a place to scurry away and hide to, but his very station was seemingly anchoring down in place for him to absorb all of the abuse in kind. His lip started to tremble and Larsen was pretty sure that the man was about to burst into tears right in front of him.

"You're out of your mind. I refuse to entertain this notion! I… I won't stand for this!"

"That's just too bad," Larsen replied flatly. "You dug your own grave this time. I'm not going to step in it with you."

"I won't go down without a fight!" Koenig seemed to screw up his courage as he took a deep breath and levelled a finger in Larsen's direction. Larsen simply stared at the offending digit, his face blank and unreadable while Koenig's teeth chattered. "If you're going to fling mud in my eye, you can be damn sure that I'll do the same to you."

"Think very carefully about what you're going to say next," Larsen coldly warned, his anger spiking in the wake of Koenig's lack of deference. "You don't want to make an enemy of me."

"I'll take my chances, thank you very much. Raynor, I don't want to have to do this, but I'm perfectly willing to take you down with me if this has truly gotten out of hand. I have enough dirt on you to get me a decent plea bargain if the hammer falls. If you throw me under the bus, what's to say that I won't hold onto you at the same time? You won't last long out there unless you keep me on. _That_ is our current understanding."

Larsen had finally had enough. Koenig's continuous resistance to the plan was not only infuriating, but stupid as well. Moronic beyond all reasonable understanding. Now this little shit had the _balls_ to threaten him? Threaten a senator? This prick needed to learn some manners and _fast_.

With the speed of a cobra, Larsen grabbed at the heavy and empty cognac bottle that had been sitting upon Koenig's desk and hefted it above his head like a club. His eyes exuded a strange calm despite the maniacal pose he was now demonstrating. His breath flowed cleanly into his lungs—he felt quite detached, like he was observing this entire scene outside of himself.

"Koenig," Larsen uttered in a hoarse rasp, "I am two seconds away from seriously fucking you up right now if you don't comply."

The younger man's eyes flitted from the bottle to Larsen's quite serious face. Incredibly, instead of being terrified of the sight, it seemed that Koenig found the whole situation so bizarre that he could not help but burst out into laughter, which had the unintended effect of enraging Larsen even more.

" _Pfft_ , yeah right," Koenig guffawed. "What are you going to do to buy my silence, Larsen? Smash that bottle over my head?"

"For once, you're completely correct."

In the next second, Larsen proceeded to smash the bottle over Koenig's head.

The resulting noise the bottle made was not the high-pitched crackling sound akin to a light smattering of delicate pieces of china upon a hardwood floor. The glass that the bottle was made of was a whole lot thicker and far more durable than Koenig had truthfully expected. Koenig's main mistake was that he had seen too many films in which people had been portrayed at being easily able to shake off being struck in the head with a glass bottle. He must have thought he could have withstood such an attack without as much as a scratch.

Reality tends to be a little less unforgiving than that. Always at the most unexpected of times.

There was a very heavy _clunk_ and the cognac bottle split into seven distinct pieces as it shattered upon Koenig's skull, but the bottle itself had so much more mass than Koenig had been anticipating that the blow had actually shunted his head downwards several inches when it hit. The impact proceeded to immediately knock Koenig out and the shattered edges of the glass sliced into the man's scalp with an alarming efficiency. Blood began pouring down Koenig's head, sluicing so fast that most of his face swiftly turned red and sticky, thick rivulets dripping freely down his face. Now thoroughly knocked out, Koenig swayed on his feet for a split-second before his knees finally got the message and gave out, dropping him to the floor where he stood.

Larsen peered over the edge of the desk as he tossed the jagged stem of the cognac bottle away. Koenig lay on the ground, not moving, but still breathing. However, the businessman was not in a good way. His blood was rapidly expanding in a wide radius from his body, dark and reflective. It soaked into his clothes and pooled underneath the crook of his neck. He was obviously going to bleed out if he did not receive some medical attention, and despite his hatred of the man, Koenig was no good to Larsen dead.

"Get in here, now," Larsen muttered into his omni-tool, not taking his eyes off the prostrate form of Koenig.

He then skirted around the desk and bent down to take stock of the previously pallid man's now blood-stained face, careful not to step in Koenig's still-leaking gore. At the very least, this had to be the one moment where Koenig was at his most tolerable for Larsen: out cold and humiliated. Yes, he would definitely be returning to _this_ memory for years on end. Larsen's fingers curled in pleasure. It had been such a joy to finally lay hands upon that man after spending so long fantasizing about it.

"Not much fight in you after all, eh?" Larsen taunted before smoothing his hair and using a kerchief to wipe at his brow, taking care to clean himself up before company would arrive.

Right on cue, the doors banged open and two Chimera troopers, hauling a stretcher between them, came through the open passage to find Larsen standing over the body of their boss. However, neither of them said a word to Larsen as the senator merely pointed a finger to the unconscious Koenig, raising an eyebrow to hone in the unsaid point. Both troopers nodded their acknowledgement and proceeded to silently and dutifully move Koenig's body onto the stretcher, leaving the pool of blood behind.

Carting the still-dripping Koenig away towards a waiting emergency vehicle downstairs, Larsen was left all by himself to appraise the view of Berlin that had been previously afforded to its prior owner. The senator stepped up to the expansive windows, regarding the impressive view of the city on this overcast day. Tiny specks of snow drifted down from the clouds above, dusting the ground below with a fine blanket of white powder. Larsen's breath fogged upon the spotless glass of the window, highlighting the temperature disparity between the frigid outdoors and the balmy interior.

Koenig would live, Larsen determined. He was not nearly lucky enough for the prospect of Koenig dying in such an ignominious fashion to come true. That man would pull through just out of spite for Larsen, but would recover just in time after Larsen would have completed the next stage of his grand plan. By that point Koenig would have no choice but to resign himself towards whatever scheme had been concocted with him in mind. This time, the little brat would stay on script now that he had a more permanent reminder of what could happen if he stepped out of line. It was wonderful what a few stitches on the head could inspire in a man.

Larsen's eyes flicked down to the circle in front of the building's lobby, automatically seeking out a red-and-white striped vehicle as it engaged its emergency lighting as well as its wailing siren, now zooming off into the streets at a rapid pace. Koenig was on his way to the hospital. Thoughts and prayers to the little bastard.

As he watched the ambulance scurry away, Larsen was captivated by a sudden urge to confirm the depths of Koenig's depravity. Doing such a thing was not necessary, but Larsen had a vindictive streak to him. Koenig had dared to defy him too many times and now Larsen would see to it that every stone would not go unturned here. Koenig was deadweight, damaged goods. Time to determine what sort of baggage he would be throwing overboard here.

Still maneuvering around the clotting puddle of streaked blood on the floor, Larsen reached over and tapped at a console key to bring it out of standby. He tabbed to the pornographic site that Koenig had been perusing before his arrival, rather curious as to what could have possibly drawn this man's attention to such explicit videos instead of acting like a CEO. It just made zero sense to Larsen. Perhaps he could find out why.

But to do that, first he had to comprehend the sort of jargon that was being utilized on this site. The video in question had a header that seemed to be composed of pure gibberish. Larsen had to squint his eyes in order to read the small type while a variety of ads and pop-ups blared in all corners of the screen.

"What the fuck is a…" he murmured, trying to play the next word in his head before sounding it out, _"…bu-… -ka-… -kke?_ '"

He knew he was probably going to regret this later, but he had already pressed the play button.

Now Larsen realized why curiosity killed the cat.

Larsen only lasted half a minute in watching the video, despite the sound being muted, and even for that brief duration, his eyes had widened to the size of saucers and his head had slowly begun to shake in a state of shock. Numbly, after he could take no more of this, he paused the video, totally disgusted at Koenig's choice of explicit entertainment. The senator, rather disturbed, had to take a moment to rub at his eyes, wishing he could take back the sequence of images he had just witnessed.

Larsen's solution to ridding his head of such vile imagery was to raid Koenig's liquor cabinet in the corner, pouring himself a hearty dram of what looked like a decanter of bourbon. He downed the whole thing in one gulp, emitting a loud groan as the alcohol burned his throat, the oaky aftertaste shooting back up to land upon his tongue.

The bourbon hinted at respite, so Larsen poured himself another dram eagerly.

 _Christ, people are weird._

* * *

 _Eden Prime_

The representation of the planet danced above Shepard's palm, filled with glowing orange light dotted with tactical pinpricks denoting key areas of the world. Familiar with quick navigation tactics, Shepard only need a scant few seconds to work out where they were and where they needed to go. The bad news was that the nearest town was about a day's hike away from their current position, and that the closest city with a spaceport was even farther than that.

If there was going to be some good news, it was that Eden Prime had a very conducive environment towards the outdoor enthusiast. Fair humidity and a temperature that hovered above the mid-70s was just about perfect for anyone spending long periods of time outside. Having trekked on frozen worlds made of ice, newly born planets coated with lava, and deep space rocks with only vacuum as an atmosphere, Shepard had to concede that Eden Prime was probably the best type of planet to be stranded upon.

The path that Shepard and Roahn on was lightly wooded, with trees of all shapes and sizes rimming the edges of the road, many of them of the tropical sort with wide leaves and ridged trunks. Prehistoric-looking ferns brushed up onto the tractor-laid path, giving the whole area a very primordial feel. Fitting, seeing as only a few decades ago, this had been an unspoiled world, free of sentient life.

Roahn, having been craning her head in all directions for the last half hour, was enamored at the sight of such a lush planet. The simple greenery of Eden Prime was a sight that was rather foreign to the girl, altogether expected since she had never visited a place like it before. On their travels together, hopping all over the galaxy, they had visited a water-logged atoll, radioactive wastelands, a sprawling city, and a cold, oxygen-less desert. Being able to see one of the breadbaskets of the galaxy was not at all boring for her—in contrast, the abundance of flora was rather overwhelming. Arid Rannoch certainly did not have any farmland like this, she recalled, even in the areas of the planet that garnered the most rainfall.

The mood was still frightfully abrasive between the two of them, expected given the intensity of the words that had been exchanged between the two just earlier today. While both Shepard and Roahn realized that they were still bound together by some nameless emotion, they still had the silent respectfulness to allow each other some semblance of peace in order for their fractured souls to recover. Any other place and they would have preferred to remain alone for a while, but given the current situation, they had no other choice but to stick together.

Shepard did not impart any of his words upon his daughter, considerate towards her current state. He realized that if they were going to truly heal themselves as a family, he needed to let Roahn move at her own pace and not hurry her along. She would speak on her own terms, when she was ready.

It turned out that she became ready sooner than he expected.

"I don't want to be mad at you."

Shepard had microscopically flinched when his daughter had started to speak. He was still a little shook up since their recent discord. It was almost as if he was afraid that their tenuous silence would be broken up once more by the hurling of well-deserved accusations in his direction. However, he quickly realized that Roahn was trying to make small talk, at least attempting to recapture some of the harmony that they had done a good job of fabricating together during the past few weeks… at least until everything fell apart, forcing him to start from scratch. Cold air icing his lungs, Shepard waited a few seconds for the blood in his head to stop pounding before he responded.

"You shouldn't feel that you have to treat me reasonably right off the bat."

"Why? What would that accomplish?"

"I don't know," Shepard admitted, letting his gaze wander aimlessly. "I just don't feel that I can rightfully tell you how to feel. I've essentially forfeited my right to take the moral high ground ever again from what I've done to you."

"You don't think I _want_ to trust you? Keelah, dad…"

"What more can I do, Roahn? What else can I say to get your trust back?"

Roahn noticeably failed to answer her father's queries at that, therein providing a different type of resolution from her silence. The two continued walking abreast to each other. The light from the sun struggled in piercing the canopy of leaves that provided a welcome blanket of shade. The cold air was sobering, simmering with energy. Both of them could taste the decay of vegetation when they inhaled—even Roahn could discern the vivid scents through her filters, yet one more wonderful sensation for her to experience.

"When you first came to Eden Prime," Roahn said, her first words after several minutes had gone by, "where did you find the prothean beacon?"

"About…" he started but had to compose himself and begin again because his throat was so dry. "It was on the other side of the planet, I believe. We're nowhere near where I first touched down."

"Oh," was all Roahn said, clearly disappointed. "I would've wanted to have seen the place where you activated the beacon. You know, where everything started."

Shepard nodded in understanding, still a little apprehensive at Roahn's careful attitude. "It's not much to look at right now. As far as I know, there's not really anything there apart from a tiny little memorial indicating the exact spot where the skirmish ended… or it may have been placed at where the prothean beacon had originally been unearthed. Truthfully, I sort of forgot which it was. All the damage from the war has been repaired and the broken beacon was placed in a museum somewhere. I think it's on the Citadel now. Eden Prime is just a little too far out of the way for most people to make a trip out here just to see something like that."

"I see."

"Believe me, you're not missing much. Most of what you're seeing now is a lot like what the site was back when I was here. Large fields of farmland. Strong and towering arcologies. Rolling and rocky hills with limestone peeking out. Nothing at all like the other places we visited."

"I suppose so," Roahn shrugged in acceptance right as the path they were on burst them out into a clearing.

Endless rows of what looked like vines propped up on wooden stakes and wires seemed to stretch on and on to their right. Clusters of little bulbous pods clung to these vines, dangling heavily, fat with juice. Roahn, curious, walked up to inspect these vines, gingerly rolling the fruit between her fingers. Dew that had not yet evaporated clung to her suited fingers, beading gently and glimmering as the sun refracted within it.

"Grapes," Shepard explained back by the road. "They've got a whole vineyard here."

Once she was sated, Roahn jogged back over to the dirt path, a bit awed at the size of the fruit fields before her. The vineyard here probably had enough grapes to fill an average-sized cruiser. Something like this should be what the quarians manning the farms over on Rannoch should aspire to achieve, she figured. A shame that these grapes were not of dextro quality. Being able to buy fruit like this in bulk would make a serious contribution towards Rannoch's food supplies.

The two then crested a small hill with a lone tree upon it. Like all creatures, they made a beeline for the shade that the tree offered. The hill also provided them with a good view of the surrounding area, which was simply more and more heavily tilled fields with a smattering of woods and creeks that broke up the overall landscape.

Shepard took a moment to wipe at his brow. His condition had improved noticeably now that he had been afforded a bit to move at his own pace, given the amount of time since the Legionnaire had chemically tortured him. There were still slight smatterings of pain, mostly in his joints, but otherwise he could walk at a steady speed without wobbling and each breath of fresh air served to invigorate him further, stoking his confidence and breeding his imagination in all sorts of different directions.

He checked his map and swiped through a few mindless extranet pages to get to his map application. They were still several hours away from civilization. They were within range of the planet's own net web, but Shepard figured that calling for help, for a pickup, was akin to setting off a flare at his location. He was not going to take that option unless he was certain that he needed.

Leaning against the tree next to him, Roahn offered no complaints of her own. If the girl was exhausted after all that she had been through in the past 24 hours, she certainly did a good job of not showing it. Whatever the case, Shepard could not have foreseen this sort of stamina from Roahn until he had witnessed it with his own eyes. All he knew was that, despite what she thought of him, he was immeasurably proud of her.

"Maybe one day we'll get to visit that place," Shepard said as he crossed his arms, staring off at where a nearby stream took a deep bend just a couple of miles away. "Where the beacon was. Just us. After everything's cooled down a bit."

Tenderly, Roahn lifted her head and gave a slight bob of her head. A soundless nod.

"I guess this planet means a lot for people, doesn't it?" Shepard was unable to keep his silence locked down anymore. "I suppose it does for me. Had I not set foot on Eden Prime during my tenure in the Alliance… I would imagine that things in this galaxy would have played out very differently. That's a lot to imagine, isn't it? How much the future could change just from making the slightest deviation? I don't know, it's too much for me to even comprehend. I was just a soldier when I made my way here—thinking that this was going to be a trial run as part of an initiation into the Council Spectres. No one could have known that by me being here and touching that beacon could I have done the things people say about me today. The Reapers. The war. I just don't know what would have happened to me had I not made it to this place."

Walking up to Shepard's side, Roahn crossed her arms as she looked up at her father. "You wouldn't have been the person you are today if you didn't touch that beacon. You… wouldn't have met mom."

Shepard ponderously bobbed his head at that and shifted his weight from one foot to the other, nimble blades of grass gently grasping towards his shoes.

"I'd say everything _did_ come out to a net positive, huh?" he murmured, basking in the heat from the sun.

He closed his eyes, taking in the nearby sounds of lightly chirping birds, branches creaking, and leaves rustling—the dance of Eden Prime's ecology. Nature in perfect harmony. Sometimes Shepard preferred to tune everything out and just focus his consciousness inward, letting only the bare hints of reality penetrate his mental sphere, bringing him close to the here and now. This way, he could choke out the fires of his guilt, strangle them with such powerful tranquility. It was the only way he could ever hope to find any semblance of peace in his life these days.

But, of course, reality would prove to be too strong for him to contain—like an unwanted guest, it rapped upon his mind incessantly.

This was henceforth proven when a darker shadow fell upon Shepard, discernable even through his closed eyelids. What little light had managed to penetrate his membranes had suddenly been snuffed out into an even blacker mass. There was only one explanation for there being a large shadow being suddenly and unexpectedly implanted upon a smooth and lightly forested plain such as this.

A ship. Hurtling directly towards them.

" _Roahn!_ "

Snapping his eyes open, Shepard felt his heartrate skyrocket back up to dangerous levels. Already the radius of the blob-like shadow was spreading as he was now able to ascertain a dark object, snuffing out the sun, rapidly descend from on high. Immediately, Shepard's tactical mind began scrambling—there was no cover out here that could provide a good place to mount a defense, the forest they had recently exited was a quarter mile away which was too far of a distance to even attempt (in case the approaching ship had ground cannons upon its undercarriage to fire upon them with), and the only weapon they had between them was a stupid little—

"Dad, it's okay!" Roahn yelled out as buffets of wind began to hurtle into their faces. The girl ran forward, out beyond the shelter of the tree and she waved her arm back and forth rapidly, her omni-tool aglow around her forearm while her _sehni_ flapped mercilessly in the breeze.

"Roahn, what are you doing?!" Shepard had to holler over the shrieking wind, shielding his eyes from the massive gusts.

The quarian turned around, eyes positively beaming brightly beyond her sapphire visor, despite the hurricane-level winds ravaging all around them, threatening to blow them away. "We're fine, dad! Look! Look who it is!"

Thoroughly dumbfounded, Shepard did not know whether Roahn had gone quite mad or if she genuinely knew something that he did not. Choosing to trust his daughter's instincts, Shepard peered upwards, squinting his eyes through the glare, as the onrushing ship loomed larger and larger into view.

As the craft grew closer, Shepard was able to perceive that it was not at all a combat frigate, or an armed troop transport. In fact, it looked like there were no weapons on it at all. Actually, now that he thought about it, it was more along the lines of a shuttlecraft—or a medium-sized yacht. The ship actually looked rather familiar, to boot.

Could it be? No, it couldn't. But wait… it was…

The swift light cruiser's underside jets flared in four crimson flares, slowing its descent. The poor tree upon the hill was now being callously buffeted by the increasing frequency of wind as the shuttle continued to displace the air with all the force it exerted downward. Now hovering just a dozen meters upon the ground, polarized canopy facing father and daughter, the cruiser lumbered along as it rotated in place, almost lazily turning while the rear hatch and ramp lowered in preparation for the inhabitants to disembark the second the craft made planetfall.

And, standing somewhat sheepishly at the top of the extended ramp, was a most welcome face. They were a dark silhouette amongst the warm backdrop, a distinct expression of relief visible in their eyes, apparent even at this distance.

"Garrus!" Shepard roared happily as he beheld his friend standing within the ship, fighting to make his words rise over the din. "You magnificent son of a bitch!"

The turian flipped a wayward salute towards the human, taking a noticeable exhale afterward his fears allayed to know that his friends were safe and sound. As the ship continued to set itself down, Shepard approached Roahn, who had been bouncing upon her toes in excitement the whole time.

"All right," he took a knee, a grin spreading across his face. "How did you know who it was?"

"Dad, come on," Roahn rolled her eyes as she waggled her hand, the circular omni-tool still levitating a centimeter above her palm. "I'm not blind. You think that I wouldn't have known to copy all of your ship's information to my tool in case something like this happened? I've been pinging the registry ID ever since we landed here."

Shepard blinked, stupefied that the apparent solution was in fact so simple.

"Your tool has that capability?"

"Uh… yeah. Tightbeam scanner and everything. All I need is access to a QEC satellite. Quick and undetectable to anyone else."

A few seconds of silence came in succession as Shepard tried to thoughtfully consider the knowledge that Roahn had not only thought of a resolution to get off this planet for the past few hours, she had been acting upon it this whole time. For all the surprises he had been witness to, this was one of the better ones.

"I'll be damned," Shepard blew air from his mouth as he led his daughter towards the waiting ship.

* * *

"Glad to see you made it out of there," Garrus pulled Shepard in for a firm and brotherly hug, slapping the human once upon his back, making Shepard cough for a brief moment. "We were following as best we could, trying to see if we could help get you out from that ship in any way. Looks like you took care of that quite easily."

"What can I say? I had all the help I needed," Shepard gestured to Roahn, who timidly now looked away once she was back in the presence of her idols.

Liara, who had been piloting the ship, also came into the main hold to breathlessly hug both Shepard and Roahn in relief. The cruiser's autopilot had taken over the necessary duties, having already sent the craft screaming back upwards into the far reaches of Eden Prime's atmosphere. The windows turned dark as they became dotted with only starlight, the glow from the planet rapidly receding as they beat feet towards the nearest mass relay.

"You're not injured?" Liara asked as she inspected Shepard's face, searching for any visible wounds.

Shepard shook his head, lightly pushing away the asari's hand. "Nothing to see on the outside, at least."

"And you?" Liara bent down towards Roahn. "You okay?"

The girl lightly nodded, her gaze still wavering a bit. "I'm… I'm just fine."

Liara sighed, relieved that the two at least appeared to being doing marginal on all fronts. All of them were still shaken by the sudden encounter with Chimera on Tuchanka and none of them wanted to reaffirm or relive the tortuous moment of having to watch Wrex, their dear friend, perish at the hands of the Legionnaire. There would be a time and a place to properly mourn for him, but all four of them were still so collectively shell-shocked right now that they still needed ample time to calm down.

The quartet, longing to rest their weary legs, stumbled over to the booth in the kitchen to congregate. Shepard let out a loud groan as the weight was finally taken off his sore feet. It felt like his legs were about to fall right off, for he had been standing for hours. Roahn scooted up next to him, too tired or perhaps too observant to let any animosity slip in front of Garrus and Liara.

"You got your father out of there all by yourself, Roahn?" Liara asked the girl in astonishment while she managed to smile sensitively.

"She certainly did," Shepard answered for her, pride now managing to invade his inflections. He did not elaborate further, but the implication was enough to mightily impress his friends, no doubt filling their heads with comparisons to the girl's dear mother as the resemblance was now more than uncanny.

Sitting across from his friend, Garrus lightly tapped his claw-like hands together while Liara left to procure something from the kitchen. He had been around Shepard long enough to discern when he was trying to keep his emotions tampered down. The human had a good poker face, but there were always subtle tics to decipher—a slight twitch in the corner of the mouth, eyes unwilling to be fixated upon a singular point, laborious and thoughtful breathing intervals. No question about it that something was troubling Shepard heavily, but Garrus knew better than to ask his friend directly for the source of his consternation. That would only earn him a dark look and bitter silence. He decided that he would not ask, no matter how intense the urge got within him.

There were always other matters to discuss, which would serve to take his mind off his temptations.

Before he could ask, Liara had just returned with drinks in her hands for the new arrivals. Coffee for Shepard and water for Roahn. Touched at the generosity, especially since he had not at all prompted Liara for a refreshment, Shepard wet his mouth, dry and cracked lips struggling to pierce the vacuum that had inhibited his throat in order to thank the asari. All he could manage was a stunted wheeze, though, so he gave Liara a slow and grateful nod. To her credit, Liara smiled and returned the gesture, understanding that Shepard's tiredness was limiting his ability to properly respond.

Roahn, on the other hand, managed an emotional, "Thank you," and started sucking at the water greedily through a straw. The poor girl was thirsty. It had probably been hours since she had last had something to drink. In less than half a minute, the glass had been drained and Roahn slumped against the cushions of the booth, nicely quenched.

Shepard took a measured sip of his coffee, the smell of roasted beans tickling his nose. The warm liquid surged down his throat and lit his body up from the inside. Fire bloomed in his belly, dispelling the chill that had fell upon him since Tuchanka. The bitter taste clinging to his tongue, Shepard savored the coffee just a little longer before taking another thoughtful drink.

Liara gave the both of them a sympathetic smile and left to refill Roahn's glass. When Roahn began to protest, saying that Liara did not need to bother and that she was more than capable of getting her drink, the asari politely insisted, wanting to make sure that the girl was as comfortable as possible.

"Chimera left Tuchanka the instant that they had you on board their ship," Garrus sighed once Liara had rejoined them at the table. "They were certainly bold enough to land on the krogan homeworld just to get to you. I can't imagine what lines they aren't willing to cross now that they've lost you."

Shepard thoughtfully considered Garrus' words. "I've thought about that as well. It's just the latest indication that this nightmare is going to last longer than I would've hoped. Already the cost has been too great. I don't want any more friends to suffer on my account."

"Yes, well, your friends aren't going to stand by and watch you suffer," the turian indicated with a long finger. "We've already established this. A threat to you is a threat to all of us."

"Garrus is right," Liara bolstered. "We're not leaving you, Shepard. We'll face all of this together. It's what we've done for years. No reason that we should stop now. It's what Wrex would have wanted."

 _And look where that got him_ , Shepard thought darkly, but remained considerately silent as the mood turned palpably darker.

The turian fumbled with what he was going to say next and, after a fruitless moment, savagely and unexpectedly banged his hand on the table, causing everyone to jump in their seats. "Damn it, this wasn't fair! Wrex deserved better than this. He survived everything for over thousand years just to die like _that?_ "

"He'll be avenged," Shepard said rather judiciously as he nursed his coffee. "I'm not going to let this stand, mark my words."

"I'm glad to hear that, but… I'm still having trouble figuring out why they're still bothering with you at all. They blow up your house, kill our friends, and that _somehow_ doesn't satisfy them?"

"They didn't get much out of me that would help them in their cause," Shepard nervously smirked. "Knowing Larsen, he'll try to take another stab at things. I'm not going to let that happen, however."

Liara leaned forward, knotting her hands in interest. "I'm guessing you have a plan, then?"

Both Roahn and Garrus turned towards Shepard, eagerly waiting to see if he would confirm such a statement or not.

The human just gave a sly shrug. "Of sorts."

Garrus blinked. "Of… sorts? What exactly does that mean?"

"It means that I have an idea of what to do. I'm still figuring out the details."

"Tell me that you at least have an idea of where we need to go next?" the turian leaned back in his chair.

Shepard furiously began tapping his fingers upon the table as he put on a ponderous look. "That's part of the problem, buddy. I think… that in order for us to finally be rid of this mess, we're going to have to make the next move for once. That, however, means that we're going to need to get pretty close to the lion's den."

Liara gave a start. "You mean… _Earth?_ "

"I really don't see any other way," Shepard nodded.

All of the occupants at the table shared concerned looks amongst themselves. Obviously, the idea of travelling to Earth, the very place that Chimera had the most secure foothold in, was not the sort of place they would have pegged for Shepard to select next.

"I know that the prospect of getting to Earth is going to be tricky…" Shepard chuckled dryly, reassuring everyone that he had at least thought things through this far.

"That's understating things a bit," Garrus groused. "We're never going to get this ship to the surface without attracting any attention. Earth is one of the most heavily monitored planets in the entire galaxy and Chimera is the Alliance's main military force. The chances are high that they're monitoring all traffic for any ships flagged in their system, and it's safe to say that this ship is probably one of the ones that has been flagged."

"All I know is that I want to get down to Earth's surface eventually. What I need to accomplish is down on that planet. I can't think of any other way to finally end this, you guys. I don't want to lay low for this anymore. I'm not going to be running this time. I'd understand if you wouldn't want to join me—"

"We'll be with you every step of the way," Liara assured without hesitation. "But it doesn't change the fact that we'll need to find a way to sneak onto Earth without Chimera taking notice."

"That's fine," Garrus shrugged. "We can just call Kaidan for help."

Kaidan Alenko was a Lieutenant Colonel in the Alliance marines and part of the revived biotics corps. The academy that he taught new recruits at was in Mexico City, where he had a rather large residence. Shepard had not seen the man or had talked to him in years, but he knew that Kaidan never strayed too far from Earth these days, considering his duties. He would dutifully answer any call for assistance from his old commander, he knew that much.

But he had to shake his head. "Probably not a good idea. Chimera will probably be monitoring any activities of people I've associated with. Anyone who's served under me will probably be heavily scrutinized."

Garrus bit back a curse. "I guess that leaves out James then, too. Last I heard he was on Earth as well, which is a shame. You sure we can't just camp out on the Citadel and wait for everything to blow over?"

"Camping out's not going to do us any good, I'm afraid," Shepard sighed. "Unless we can think of someone who is not affiliated with us and is also willing to take the risk to ship us down to Earth's surface, we're going to have to get a little inventive on what we need to do next."

No one said a word for a while. In this case, silence was a universal sign for bad news. None of them could afford to waste any time now that they had just this one sliver of an advantage. Wait too long and they would lose the upper hand.

It really did seem like everyone was stumped, until Garrus suddenly perked his head up, looking simultaneously shocked and pleased with himself, obviously having been seized with inspiration. "I think… I might have an idea of someone that could help us."

Shepard raised a hand an inch off the table in deference. "It's better than having no idea right now. You're sure that you really know a guy?"

"Pretty sure," Garrus nodded before his mandibles unconsciously twitched and the turian managed a guilty look. "But I don't think he's going to be happy about it at first."

* * *

 _The Citadel_

"Doctor?" the nurse called as she jogged down the pristine white hallways of Huerta hospital. The woman hung a sharp right as she now approached a clear glass bridge that connected the hospital's Tower 3 to its main inpatient wing: Tower 1. "Doctor McLeod?"

Sam McLeod, clad in his uncharacteristic white lab coat (as most of the staff preferred to dress themselves in the form-fitting jumpsuits), stopped in the middle of the bridge and looked over his shoulder irritably. He scratched at his shorn beard and grumbled something unintelligible as his daydreaming spiel had been so unceremoniously interrupted. Technically, he was on his break at the moment, and Sam very much liked to think and walk aimlessly around the halls at these times, as they were the only moments of his work day where he could leave his thoughts to himself. These little sojourns were rather sacred to him, so any deviations or any intrusions from the outside world that interfered with his firm schedule made him unreasonably, yet briefly, angry.

He cooled just in time to allow the nurse, an asari, to catch up to him. He did not recognize this particular nurse, but that was to be expected in a hospital that employed several hundred people on this very campus. Sam did not have the mental abilities comparable to a salarian—he could not be expected to have a photographic memory that listed every single person on the payroll at Huerta.

"Yes? What's going on?" Sam brusquely asked the nurse as he shoved his hands into his pockets. His weight rapidly shifted from foot to foot, a sign that he was rather antsy to proceed onwards without being bogged down from further distractions.

"I'm so glad I caught you," the nurse stooped slightly as she fought to catch her breath. She must have gone quite the distance in an effort to catch him. "Your patients for your appointment at one are here and have apparently been waiting for some time. They were quite… insistent that I bring you to them immediately."

"Huh? _Patients?_ "

At once, Sam checked his chronometer after rubbing his eyes in surprise. Odd, he did not think that he had any patients scheduled for one in the afternoon today, let alone for the rest of the day at all. Sure enough, when he opened up his planner, he saw that there was nothing taking up the 1:00 PM block in terms of appointments. Sam mentally wilted. HR must have screwed up again with the scheduling. Fucking idiots. Either that, or these so-called patients had somehow mixed up the date with which they were supposed to arrive on to today. This happened way more often than he would have liked. The twenty-third century was bearing down on them and _still_ preventable issues like messing up the assigned dates existed! He would have thought that people in this era would be more efficient by now. Guess this meant that he was going to have to walk all the way back to his office and bleakly break the news to his oblivious guests. That would eat up the rest of his break time for the day. Already he could feel his arbitrary anger begin to spike from the notion that his alone time would summarily be wasted.

And… did the nurse say _patients?_ As in plural? The hell was _that_ about?

"Yes, patients," the nurse said, not at all noticing that Sam's face had fallen several inches. "You were apparently supposed to meet with them fifteen minutes ago."

"I don't have—," Sam was about to say, but quickly realized that the nurse would be unable to do anything in the wake of his griping, so he shut up on that bit. Agonizingly, he rubbed at his face with his hands in a mournful manner. "Did these patients give their names at all?"

The nurse looked particularly sheepish. "Actually, they called the office using… your desk phone, looking for you. I'm sorry, doctor, I… I actually don't know who they are."

 _Surprise, surprise_ , Sam grumbled to himself, but he grumbled out an insincere thanks to the nurse before he stomped back the way he came, over to the elevator bay that would take him to his floor.

Little things like this always seemed to crop up at inconvenient times, Sam considered as he leaned against the rear of the elevator as it shunted him down several stories. The life of an arthroscopic surgeon should have been a very simple affair, but apparently he spent a good deal of his work day trying to correct for simple administrative mistakes that either IT or HR had caused in the first place. Scheduling incidents like this one were not all that uncommon, sadly. Sam could count at least a dozen incidents in the past year in which a patient of his had stumbled into his office at the wrong time or the wrong day. Either they had read the date wrong or HR's software had malfunctioned and had sent a reminder indicating an erroneous time to the patient in question. Sam had sent several messages to IT over the years, mostly for his own benefit, begging that the hospital invest in some new patient-handling software if their current subscription was causing so many problems now. True to form, he never received any replies back, which only served to cement in Sam's mind that the bureaucracies of these corporations could be such sloths when it came towards nurturing change.

The doors to the elevator opened and a sour-faced Sam exited after pushing through the throng of people gathered at the entrance, having half a mind to bark at them to show some courtesy and leave the opening of the elevator clear for people to get out. He had to bite his tongue. Sam noticed that he tended to get mad at so many small things lately. His wife had been instrumental in pointing out this little aspect to him so that he would be more aware of his boorish behavior. For her sake, he was so desperate to change and to be a little more on the calm side. His blood pressure would certainly thank him.

Yet there was a part of him that ultimately liked to wallow in anger at all times, almost as if he deliberately kept a portion of his brain dialed down to a simmer, ready to explode at a moment's notice.

His office was a few feet away now and Sam was screwing himself up in preparation to be as polite as possible when telling these patients that they had showed up on the wrong day. And if this was not HR's fault, then that reflected upon the patient a whole lot worse. Sam was not a very forgiving sort and he tended to consider people who did not know how to read something as basic as a calendar with a rather intense form of contempt. At some point, he figured, ignorance was playing some part in the equation here. How could some people go their whole lives and not figure out how to read a calendar? He had to suffer enough of such illiteracy when it came towards teaching senior personnel at work on how to create simple spreadsheets. There was just no reason for this level of incomprehension in this day and age.

It was a wonder he had not strangled someone in the workplace as of yet.

Breathing hard through his teeth, Sam tugged at his coat to make sure that all the wrinkles had been smoothed out when he finally reached the door to his office. He patted his short hair to fix up whatever messes might have occurred while he was out and firmly stormed inside to confront the delinquent invalids.

He had already prepared a brief outline in his head on how to gently break the news to his patients that they were total morons, but that scenario came and died in his head as he found himself confronted by four similarly bemused individuals as they occupied both the couch and two chairs that had been positioned in front of his ample desk, three of which he recognized right off the bat from memory.

The asari had a concerned expression on her face, rather worried. The turian seemed to have an impish air about him as he brightened upon seeing Sam. The human, Sam realized that he had just talked to days ago and did not need any reintroductions. The quarian, on the other hand, he had never met but based on her young age and close proximity to the human, Sam had no trouble guessing her relation to the human, given the empirical evidence.

 _What in the name of all that is holy?_ Sam wondered, astonished that three living legends were inhabiting his office. His lips started to move of their own accord but no words came out.

Clearly enjoying Sam's startled reaction, Garrus lightly waved to him, fighting hard not to guffaw out loud. "Hey, doc. Hope we weren't interrupting anything important, but… we sort of need your help."

Sam gave a tortured blink, his jaw dropped open, and he had to tousle his entire body all over as goosebumps began to travel up his spine. His brain running furiously blank, he stood in the doorway like an idiot, clearly having been stunned out of his mind at how current events had unfolded within this room.

In times like these, there was only one thing to say.

"You have _got_ to be fucking kidding me," he blurted out.

* * *

 **A/N: Everything's all coming together now. I simply hope that you're all enjoying the ride. I've still got a few surprises left in store, so try not to get too complacent, heh.**

 **Playlist:**

 **Eden Prime/Tearful Confrontation: "Mars" by Harry Gregson-Williams from the film _The Martian_**

 **The Ship Arrives (Family Theme Reprisal): "1976" by Hans Zimmer, Bryce Jacobs, Jasha Klebe, Mel Wesson, and Martin Tillman from the film _Rush_**

 **The Start of a Plan/Hospital Interlude (Sam's Theme): "King Arthur: Legend of the Sword" by Daniel Pemberton from the film _King Arthur: Legend of the Sword_**


	19. Chapter 19: A Return to Quantum

_Council Apostatizing of Human Military Forces (CAHMF-1) Bill - Set 1  
_ _Article 3 – Grievances for Secession_

 _a) Disciplinary action and consummate amercements have been unevenly distributed despite objective evidence that Council charters have routinely been violated by its fellow members (re: Asari Republics, Salarian Union.) Please see Section 4, Paragraph 4 for specific examples._

 _b) The Ministry of Finance has failed to disperse adequate reparations garnered from the damages incurred during the Reaper War. Estimated percentage of damages that humanity suffered currently amounts to 65% more than the next heavily damaged Council member. Calculated remainder to be paid: 291.04 trillion credits._

 _c) Individual intelligence groups (STG, Asari Command, et al) have subsequently declined to disseminate proper and requisite data pertaining to widespread repercussions. The withholding of such information has jeopardized the direct impact of military forces stationed in specific areas, leading to the catastrophic loss of life and the destruction of property. Appropriate reasoning for this concealment of data still have not been provided, despite prompting._

 _For failure to abide by the tentpole and sacrosanct pillars upon which the Council was formed and advertised, the Systems Alliance formally announces its intention to secede from the Citadel Council._

 _The timeline for this process to be complete will be set five years from the ratification date of this bill._

* * *

 _Earth_ _  
UNAS State of California_

Wearied shock absorbers bounced and creaked as the sleek coupe wound its way through the forested hills of Santa Cruz. A throaty growl escaped from the rear of the vehicle, out the exhaust pipe, the culprit of the noise being the massive twelve-cylinder gas-guzzling behemoth of an engine sealed tightly away in the front of the car. Radial tires gripped the road nicely, sticking quite easily to the asphalt surface despite it having just rained a few hours ago. Pop-up headlights cut low beams through the steam that rose up from the highway, creating a shallow veil of mist that, in this low light, looked like smoke.

In the front of the vehicle, Sam McLeod was tapping his fingers erratically as he gripped the wheel tightly, a rather befuddled expression having been etched onto his face since he had made planetfall. Next to him, in the passenger seat, sat Roahn, who was positively glued to the window, wide-eyed, as the redwoods of Santa Cruz whisked by at cruising speeds. In fact, Roahn's attention had been pulled in multiple directions ever since she had stepped out onto the surface of Earth for the first time in her life, most of it directed towards this rather strange contraption that Sam was now driving. She had never seen anything like it before.

Sam had called this particular transport an "automobile" or simply a "car" as a form of shorthand. Apparently its full designation was a BMW 850Ci, but Roahn had never heard of BMW before nor did she understand what the number 850 was supposed to represent. The car itself was not really luxuriously equipped, on the other hand. The only accoutrements that came stock with this thing were the air conditioning and the radio head unit, both looking archaic. The amenities, or lack thereof, was not a trifle that Sam appeared to be concerned with. He would rather have this care as accurate to the day it was made than ruin it with a few anachronisms.

Unlike most ground transportation vehicles, the BMW did not run on hydrogen fuel cells but on unleaded gasoline, a fluid that had apparently powered most vehicles on Earth a rather long time ago. What was most interesting to Roahn was that Sam had indicated that this particular vehicle she was in dated from the year 1995, which made this car more than two hundred years old. The doctor had said that he had initially installed a fuel cell engine in the car upon purchasing it, but after it had been in an accident some years back Sam had professed a desire to get the thing back into showroom condition, which meant that he had gone to a great deal of money and trouble to procure two-hundred year old parts to put into a two-hundred year old car. Roahn was not at all familiar with the painful labors it takes to restore a car but she was able to glean from Sam's tone that it probably took a great deal of effort.

Sam's other passengers, however, were considerably less comfortable than Roahn. The BMW was only a two-door car, and even though it had five seats, Shepard, Garrus, and Liara looked painfully squashed as they struggled to move themselves into the most convenient position possible without incurring any cramps or tightness in their limbs. Truth be told, the three seats in the rear of the car were more of an afterthought than anything else as the headroom was poor and the legroom rather pitiful. The three of them had to clamber all the way into the back upon entering the car, something that was easier said than done and perhaps more comical than it should have been—Shepard and Garrus had taken the window seats while Liara was helplessly mashed in the middle, as she was the thinnest out of the three of them. They had given the front seat to Roahn out of politeness, which was why they were not openly griping right about now within the girl's earshot.

Roahn returned her attention back to the outside world. The forest that they were currently driving through was filled with these massive trees as tall as skyscrapers. Sequoia trees, Sam had called them. Trees that stayed green throughout the entirety of the year. They had a very sharp but pleasant smell to them. Pine. Juniper. Sweet sage. Springy juniper. A wealth of botanical aromatics—a delight to the senses. There was even a slight tinge that her nostrils could pick up that was indicated to be a telltale sign of eucalyptus trees.

Thick and leafy ferns coated the springy ground, obscuring the damp soil. Water from the rain dripped off of the textured leaves, quickly being absorbed by the roots as the ground eagerly soaked it up. Dapples of sunlight, cut to ribbons by the high-reaching branches, felt thick and weighty from the moisture-soaked air. Scatterings of birds hopped from tree to tree, chirping their songs all the while. Roahn's hands pressed themselves flat against the glass of the BMW's windows, her visor nearly tapping upon it as she became absorbed into the density that the redwood forest offered.

Wow, this was an incredible place! So, _this_ is where humans came from.

Meanwhile, no longer able to contain himself, Garrus futilely attempted to shift his hips in an effort to not to become so tightly pressed against the side of the car. He failed, obviously, and he let out a groan in the wake of that failure.

"It's a good thing that no one in your family is fat," he grumbled to the human driving the car.

"I'm _so_ sorry, princess," Sam snapped from the front, briefly turning his head but keeping his eyes peeled to the road. "I didn't _expect_ that I'd have to carpool four people after work today. I mean, if I had a little more warning…"

Unable to effectively talk and drive at the same time, Sam just gave up and went back to concentrating with steering the car.

While the accommodations to the trio in the back were less than ideal, Sam was the more correct in terms of being morally responsible. His house was on Earth, located in the hills above a well-populated community known as Santa Cruz. He drove to the spaceport every day and used his own personal ship to commute back and forth to the Citadel, where he worked at Huerta. He had clung to this routine for at least ten years, so Sam had no reason to expect to deviate from it on this particular day. It was true—there was no way he could have known.

Garrus did not react to the sting by Sam. He had entered into enough conversations with the man to realize that the human naturally reserved a tone of acidity, but it was mostly utilized as a form of endearment. One just had to learn to tolerate it after a while. Despite the biting comments being occasionally traded between the two, Garrus had apparently trusted Sam enough to help them out with getting to Earth's surface, as Sam had revealed to Garrus years before that he had a ship and that he had a house on the planet. Since Shepard and company needed both a ship and a place to temporarily lay low, Sam McLeod had become their new meal ticket in that regard.

Sam had seemed less than thrilled at the prospect of helping the four out at first, but that annoyance had been derived from the spontaneity of Garrus' request to use him to ferry them all down to Earth's surface. The doctor had quickly softened from the nature of the request and, courteously enough, had signed out from the hospital immediately, offering them all safe passage on the spot. Evidentially, Garrus' instincts had been correct; Sam respected Shepard and his crew too much to even consider selling them out and would therefore drop everything to assist them in a time of need.

The voyage down from the Citadel had only taken a measly ten minutes. Shepard did take note that Sam's ship, some vessel with an overly eloquent moniker of _The Monterrey Obtruder_ , was a well-stocked crate with enough interior volume within to rival even his own craft. Shepard's ship, speaking of which, had been left in dry dock over at the Citadel to gradually accrue docking fees every day. He would not need it where he was going.

Santa Cruz had a small spaceport within the city limits by the beach, which was where Sam tended to park his ship. His transport, the cramped two-door, had been waiting in a nearby lot, not at all suspecting that its suspension would soon be tested with a full load of people. With little fanfare, the five of them had disembarked from the grounded craft and had stuffed themselves into the car, whereupon Sam had proceeded to drive north, into the forested mountains, where his home ostensibly lay.

"How much further?" Garrus piped up again, but with a tightened smirk on his face. Now he was just trying to annoy Sam with his banter.

Sam just spared a half-second to glare at Shepard, ignoring the bait. "Would you object if I just threw _him_ out?" he spoke to the other human in the car as he jerked a thumb behind him to the wide-eyed turian.

Shepard just reclined back and slowly glanced up and down at Garrus, analyzing the possibilities. "It _would_ give us a lot more space back here," he considered.

"Shepard, you wouldn't," Garrus pleaded.

Sam just shook his head in mirth from the front seat. "It probably wouldn't do much good. We're just about there, anyway." He looked over at Roahn and cracked a smile. "Maybe next time, eh?"

Roahn similarly laughed, a sound which served to fully snap Shepard out of whatever light reverie he had placed himself in. There was a distinct sort of confidence that Sam exuded when he had addressed Roahn, the kind born from experience of talking to children Roahn's age. Right, Shepard realized, Sam had mentioned during their first meeting that he had a daughter himself. Regardless, the doctor seemed to be unusually adept with talking to a quarian—most humans were actually still a little put off with having to talk to someone sealed away in an enviro-suit—but Sam seemed to disregard that aspect entirely.

Or… Shepard was overthinking the entire scenario, which was probably the most logical answer.

A few minutes later, Sam began to slow the car and gently turned off onto a smoothly paved drive that cut a thin path through a dense cluster of trees. Twin stone pillars flanked the entrance, each one accompanied by smooth iron gates. The coupe drove between the gates, proceeding at a more methodical pace now that they had left the main highway.

Sam's home was revealed through the array of topiaries moments later. Truthfully, Shepard had been expecting something along the lines of a simple lodging, given the rustic location. What greeted them instead was a rather sleek abode, formulated by the smart and angular lines reminiscent of the Mid-Century Modern style accompanied by tasteful and delicately applied curves that hinted at a more Contemporary look. Neo-Revisionist, Shepard assumed, was the main style inherent in the house's design. Spacious, luxurious, but also quite separated from the modern world. In many ways, it reminded him of his own house back on Rannoch. When he _had_ a home there, at least.

Sam pulled the car up to the front door—a thick slab of dark wood with black steel handles that ran from the floor to the ceiling—and parked it. Another vehicle, this one a more recent model, was parked near the garage, a fact that caused Sam to pull a face of anticipation.

"Okay, look," Sam explained once everyone had extricated themselves from the BMW, itself not an easy feat, "my wife's working from home today and she doesn't know you guys are here—"

"You didn't tell your _wife_ we were coming?" Garrus interrupted, still cheeky.

"You specifically said to keep any mention of you all off of the wavelengths!" Sam shot back in a hushed tone before he calmed himself. "I have no idea how she's going to react so just… be quiet for now while I take over, okay?"

All three mumbled an agreement to which Sam had to concede was acceptable enough. The doctor then led them up to the heavy door, to which he grasped the handle, allowing the hydraulically-assisted hinges to spring forth and open it automatically to his touch.

"Honey?" Sam poked his head into the house, his voice taking on a noticeably lighter affect now that he was in the presence of his spouse. He sheepishly treaded inside, tugging at his collar while Shepard and everyone else followed closely behind, now stepping upon polished black tile flooring. "I'm back from work!"

" _You're home rather early!_ " a voice, the person unseen, carried around the corner. Shepard swore that the voice carried a distinct warble that was inherently familiar to him, but he wrote it off as the acoustics of the room messing with his hearing. " _They didn't fire you at the hospital, did they?_ "

"No, no, they didn't!" Sam continued to assure as he hung up his jacket on a nearby hanger. Taking panicked glances at his houseguests, the doctor chewed his lip before calling out. "Listen, dear, I really need to talk to you about—"

" _Well, it's actually really good that you're home at this time_ ," the voice of Sam's wife continued. " _I could use some help for dinner and Taylor is having some trouble with her grammar assignment. Not math. Grammar. This is the same girl who has aced every single one of her math tests this year and yet she gets tripped up in school by punctuation and sentence structures. Bizarre. I still think she's faking needing assistance to spend more time with you, though._ "

"I'd certainly love to help," Sam called, "but I think there's something that you should know first, dear. We… sort of have guests with us tonight."

There was the distinct clunk of someone setting a large object on the counter followed by the rapid sounds of footsteps as the person was walking over to confront her husband. " _Guests? Now? Sam… why didn't you tell me sooner? I mean… ugh! Do you know how inconvenient it is to have this sprung upon—_ "

As Sam's wife finally came into view, both parties, save for Sam, were subject to a rather peculiar and precise sort of shock. In terms of visceral reactions, Garrus, Liara, and Roahn all gave the same sort of confused blink and tilt of the head, a synchronized movement that was somewhat comical in hindsight. Shepard, on the other hand, simply reared his body back an inch, looking back and forth from Sam to the newcomer in their midst. Suddenly, a whole wealth of things were starting to make sense to Shepard. Apparently there was a reason why Sam had not exhibited any unease to Shepard's marriage to Tali as well as how easily Sam had seemed to be able to initiate conversation with Roahn.

The person standing across from them gave a similar sound of surprise, followed by a crashing sound as the glass she had been holding had slipped from her hand. She was draped in a very familiar looking suit—jet black—and twin glowing motes slipped through a translucent sheet of blood-red glass—eyes slowly widening as she understandably recognized most of the individuals that were gracing her foyer. For someone like her, not being able to recognize three of the galaxy's biggest heroes right off the bat was simply an impossibility.

Sam's wife was a quarian.

"Everyone, meet Nya," Sam introduced, his abashed face merely increasing in the wake of his wife's surprise. "Nya, meet—"

"I _know_ who they are," Nya nodded frantically as she carelessly swept away the remains of the glass with her foot. She was a very striking looking quarian, Shepard had to admit, with the careful application of crimson accents that seemed to cut vivid lines across the hexagonal textures of her enviro-suit. She had a slightly deeper voice than Tali's, while being just a tad more breathy. Quarians in general were not all that dissimilar in terms of body type, as their characteristic of having a high metabolism was ubiquitous across every single individual. Every one of them was thin as a result, sharing a very narrow range of variation in body mass. "I wasn't just born yesterday… _dear_."

" _Oof_ ," Sam winced. "I knew this was going to be awkward."

"You're damn right about that." Nya beckoned to Sam with a finger as she desperately tried to tear her eyes off of the legends while trying to be as calm and composed as possible. "Can… can I talk to you in private for a second?"

* * *

Nya shoved Sam into a nearby bathroom and locked the door for good measure behind her. Sam was desperately trying to erase his hasty grin from his face, but the sequence of events had simply been so ludicrous that he could not get his wife's reaction from seeing their guests out of his head. If anything, having to peer at his stupid smile was merely serving to annoy Nya even further.

"Sam, why the hell are Commander Shepard, Garrus Vakarian, _and_ Liara T'Soni currently standing in our house?" Nya urged in a hushed voice. "Why did you not _tell_ me that you were going to invite them all over until they had stepped through the front door?! I just… ah, _keelah_ , they saw me break that glass, didn't they? I can't believe I did that. And… wait… how did _you_ even meet them in the first place? When were you going to tell me that you're on speaking terms with Commander Shepard?"

Clearly Sam had a lot of explaining to do and this was precisely the sort of thing that he had been dreading ever since Shepard and his friends had barged into his office back on the Citadel. For the past few hours, he had been frantically trying to run through every conceivable option on how to break this sort of news to Nya in a gentle but firm manner. Apparently gentle was not going to cut it anymore. Not even close, evidentially.

Sam ran his fingers through his hair, showcasing his own agitation. "Nya, dear…"

"Sam, whenever you ' _Nya, dear'_ me it makes me think that you're about to say something I don't like."

"I… ehh… I sort of had no choice," he mustered a shrug, which was admittedly a rather feeble motion. "I had to promise not to let this slip to anyone. They're a little fastidious about their privacy… and their need to remain incognito right about now. They kind of needed my help, Nya."

" _Your_ help?" Nya looked stunned. "You're telling me that _Commander Shepard_ enlisted _your_ help?"

"What, you think I'm not worthy of it? ' _O yea of little faith?_ '"

"Well… if he wasn't in our house right about now I'd say that you were full of it. But what did you mean when you said before, that you had to promise not to let this slip?"

"That's part of the trouble I mentioned," Sam said. "From what I've been told, and don't quote me on this, but it seems like Shepard and his daughter are being chased by Alliance operatives… or private contractors… or something to that effect, I'm not really sure. They're rightfully paranoid that all their communications were being monitored, so I could not give you a heads-up call to alert you that we'd be having some company, even though I wanted to. I'm sorry, Nya, but my hands were tied on this one." He held up his hands to gesture towards his innocence. "Swear to god."

Nya did a double-take and pointed a finger back towards the door. "Wait, that little girl in there is Shepard's _daughter?_ "

"Shit, did I not mention that?" Sam was having trouble managing all these revelations, apparently.

"She's his daughter?" Nya repeated. "I… I didn't know that he had a child with Tali'Zor—er, Tali' _Shepard!_ "

"Unless he stole that kid off the street, I'm pretty sure she's his," Sam replied sardonically as he too looked back the way he came.

"What's her name?" Nya bounced on her toes. "Did you get that girl's name?"

"Of course I did! I'm not as much of an idiot as you think I am, honey." Sam smirked as Nya lightly punched him in the arm for that, enamored yet aggravated by his facetiousness. "And her name's Roahn."

" _Roahn_ …" Nya considered the word, lightly sounding out the singular syllable. "What a nice name."

* * *

"Sorry about that," Sam said as he reentered the living room, Nya at his side. "Had to sort out a few things with my wife."

Liara, knowing how important first impressions were, kindly smiled as she stepped over to shake Nya's hand in greeting. "I know it must have been quite a surprise for you, but you have no idea how thankful we are for your family housing us here."

"No, no, it's not any trouble at all!" Nya dissuaded with a rapid shake of both her head and hands, starting to get rather flustered from the knowledge that one of her own idols was now somehow indebted to her. She politely laughed as she placed a hand upon her sternum, signifying that she needed to catch her breath. "I understand now that you needed some… discretion. I'm quickly getting used to it, actually."

"I'm glad," Liara wilted in relief. "The last thing we would want is to be a burden to you."

"A burden? You? I don't think that could be possible," Nya pointed out and both women lightly chuckled in unison.

At the same time, Shepard and Roahn silently took in the living room and kitchen area as they slowly treaded their way from the onyx tiles to the soft carpet. The room itself was furnished rather handsomely—a thick rug lay underneath a large leather couch, a smooth stone hearth bordered a sooty fireplace, and an elaborately constructed stainless steel sound system flanked the edges of a broad high-definition holo-screen (Sam was apparently one who prized his home entertainment setup.)

A few blown glass vases of many varying colors adorned the spare countertops of the kitchen, adding a vibrant touch to the place. Not only that, but a few paintings that looked like abstract smears of searing hues were elegantly placed upon the walls of the house. Shepard found that he was spending a lot of time simply staring at the pictures, trying to glean a message from the seemingly purposeful chaos within the frame.

A glossy yet simple piano was situated in the corner next to what looked like an audio workstation. Shepard was always bemused at the cliché of someone owning a piano in an attempt to seem worldly, but it seemed like Sam actually dabbled in it a bit more frequently than most judging by the amount of notes and other stray bits strewn around the area. Shepard then realized that those who live in glass houses should not throw stones because he had technically owned a grand piano back when he had an apartment on the Citadel—even though it was purchased by Admiral Anderson, it still became _his_ once the title to the place had transferred over.

At the end of the living room, by the glass window that separated the house from the balcony, Garrus was standing right up to the clear partition, taking in the view. Apparently, Sam's house sported quite an impressive panorama—because the structure itself was built upon an incline, the occupants inside were easily able to peer down the mountainside, over the sprawling conifer trees, and towards the fog-wreathed ocean down below. Even the apparent sound of crashing waves could be heard at this distance, especially since the foaming white crests could be glimpsed on a clear day. There was also another noise that rose above the din, one that Garrus could not place. Sounds of… barking?

Roahn heard it too and she scampered on over to the window, nearly pressing herself prostrate against the glass in an effort to discern the sound.

"What is that?" she asked, referring to the repeated woofs that carried up from below.

"Sea lions," Nya explained as she made her way over, her eyes tilted upward in affection as she looked upon the girl, struggling to ascertain the very fact that this was Shepard's daughter. "Rather large aquatic animals native to Earth. They come up onto the beach to nap, but when they're not asleep they tend to raise quite the ruckus. If we lived any closer, the noise would keep us up at night."

Garrus, meanwhile, had moved on from the window and was now perusing the state of the McLeod's kitchen, noting (only slightly to his chagrin) that it was much nicer than what he had in his own apartment. He could only stare at the polished counters and bemoan his current situation for so long before he remembered his manners and moved to shake Nya's hand, as Liara has done.

"Sam's always been able to share fond memories of you whenever I had to go in for appointments with him," he dipped his eyes to the ground briefly. "Sorry about barging in like this, once again."

"I don't… it really _is_ no trouble," Nya emphasized as she tried to steady her hand as she linked appendages with idol number two.

"You might have to get used to us apologizing," Shepard said graciously as he as well offered his hand to shake. Nya stared at the presented limb, suddenly feeling very hesitant as if succumbing to temptation would in fact merely serve for her to fail an unsaid test. Warily, she accepted it and found warm flesh in response. Giving an unheard sigh, Nya's smile cracked wider as she felt her hand encapsulated by the firm grip of the galaxy's greatest soldier.

"You might have to get used to Nya's fawning," Sam chortled in the background, no doubt enjoying being a witness to his wife's nervous state.

" _Sam!_ " Nya hissed in reprimand, but she was trying not to laugh. Her efforts were all for naught as everyone in the room, even Roahn, began to snicker in varying degrees of amusement. It was Sam, however, who was laughing the most uproariously, which therefore earned him a smattering of blows upon his frame as his embarrassed wife, teasingly eager to save face, hurled a bevy of easily disregarded abuse his way. That only made him laugh harder which caused Nya to frustratingly quit her efforts, no doubt blushing furiously behind her mask.

"I don't mean to be rude," Shepard began after he wiped his eyes, "but… it's just that I'm wondering—"

"Wondering why I married a human?" Nya finished for him before turning to Sam and quipping, "Well, we _all_ make mistakes, _don't_ we, dear?"

Shepard was fearful of the loud wheeze he had made in response to Nya's searing statement, wondering if he was not supposed to have reacted that way. Apparently, though, it was all right as Sam was laughing once more, as was Nya, who proceeded to give her husband a brief hug as an apology for her barb. Evidentially, Shepard realized, Sam and Nya had a peculiar sort of dynamic that went along between them, one that was deliberately meant to be esoteric to everyone else. In a way, it was rather refreshing to not have the two censor themselves in front of their guests. It reminded Shepard of how he and Tali used to talk to each other years ago.

Taking several deep breaths, Shepard tentatively tried again. "If you think I'm being too forward—"

Sam simply waved a dismissive hand. "No, it's fine. We're used to it. A lot of people ask us as to how we met. It's a long and complicated story, mind you. Hell, between me and her, we could probably fit our life story together to fill a book or two."

"Or three," Nya added impishly.

"Or three," Sam nodded before glancing at Shepard. "Let me guess, you haven't really met any other human-quarian couples before, have you?"

Shepard shrugged in response. "Truthfully, it's not something that I've come across before. Other than… well… Tali and I, but that's just my experience." He then rubbed his chin as he considered the odd pair. "To be honest, when you had mentioned that you had a wife earlier, Sam, my assumptions took over and I imagined you with a human for a partner."

"The thing is that I completely understand," Sam agreed. "The same thing happens to me sometimes. My radar for sniffing out inter-racial marriages is, by and large, awful. It's funny, isn't it? One would think that I would be able to put that aside, seeing as I'm married to Nya and all," he threw an arm around his wife's shoulders, squeezing her once for emphasis, "but there are still some predispositions that I can't seem to shake. Go figure."

"So… how _did_ you meet?"

Sam looked up towards the ceiling as he gathered his memories. "Pure luck and circumstance, mostly. Also with a little bit of idiocy on my end."

"Oh? How so?"

"Well, the first time we met was under a less than ideal situation," Nya piped up mirthfully, her husband's arm still around her shoulders. "Like Sam, said, the entire tale is somewhat on the lengthy end, but it was back on the Citadel around 2182 that we ran into each other in the beginning. Maybe ' _ran into_ ' isn't the best way to describe it, honestly. We actually met in some nameless alley in a dark corner of the Citadel. I had been cornered in that alley after a few thugs saw me and, seeing as racism against quarians was a bit more prevalent at that time, decided that they could get away with beating me up."

No one noticed that Shepard's hands, clamped on the counter, were slowly starting to tighten upon the slippery corners nearly hard enough to crack the stone. He had always had a soft spot for the quarian people and the mere mention of casual violence against them was enough to bring his blood to a boil.

"It was dark and the goons felt that they had the whole place to themselves," Nya continued. "After all, I was but a _lowly_ quarian. I was on the ground, having forgotten everything about my defensive training. I could only curl into a ball and hope that the thugs would get bored with kicking me and leave. Then all of a sudden, _this_ fool walks in, having been drawn from the commotion," Nya nudged Sam in the ribs, who pulled a guilty face, "pulls a gun and demands that the lowlifes quit beating up on me."

"Ah, the hero swooping in to save the day," Garrus glided in as he made a whooshing motion with his arms. "I love this part. So, what happened? You beat up the bad guys and get the girl in the end?"

Sam guffawed. "What? Hell no! I got my ass beat, that's what happened."

"Oh," Garrus simply said, crestfallen.

"It worked out in the end," Nya leaned her helmeted head against her husband's shoulder, looking up at him in affection. "He _did_ manage to stab one of the lowlifes bad enough that they lost all interest in attacking us. The both of us had to be hospitalized, mind you, and we parted ways soon after without sharing many words, frankly. After which… I guess fate decided that we needed more opportunities together and we kept on managing to find ways to meet up over the years. Afterward, it turns out that we didn't see much of a future without each other in it, and… the rest is obvious."

Nya lifted a hand to indicate that she was finished. When Sam did not make an effort to offer anything else that was particularly substantial, Shepard could not help but give a little start at how abruptly the story had ended.

"That's it? That's all to it?"

"That's the _simple_ version," Sam explained. "We're _not_ about to go over the complex version, believe me."

"I see," Shepard said, even if he did not really see.

"Trust me. You wouldn't believe me if I told you the long version. We also don't have the time for it."

In the next instant, the distinct pitter-pattering sound of feet running upon carpet briefly reverberated through the house and a small shape—the source of the noise—came barreling out from the corner of a nearby hallway, barely as half as tall as Sam was.

"Daddy," the small thing squeaked out. "Have you seen—?"

Now Shepard had clearly lost count of just how many times he had been surprised in the last ten minutes. At this point, he might as well have ceded all semblance of control in his life. At the very least, there were now too many resemblances for him to keep track of, because this most recent intruder also happened to be a quarian—one at a very young age—who was a girl perhaps just an inch taller than Roahn. And she had just called Sam, " _daddy_."

Was this Sam's…?

There was no time for anyone to say anything else, for the girl suddenly became aware of the fact that her family was no longer alone in her house. Immediately, she straightened her posture, eyes managing to ward of the shock admirably behind a goldenrod-colored visor, and moved to greet the guests. Her parents must have dutifully taught her all the customs of how to treat unfamiliar strangers. Politeness exuded from her and the girl would probably have embarked upon a well-rehearsed introduction were it not for the fact that she suddenly realized that several of the people in the room here were very familiar. Suspiciously familiar.

"No… _way_ ," the girl breathed before she timidly moved towards the closest individual, which happened to be Garrus, and tentatively pointed a finger at him. Garrus would not be an easy person to pick out of the crowd ordinarily, but it just so happened that his heavily scarred face plus his maddeningly strict tendency to never leave home without a tactical eyepiece made his visage all the more apparent. "Are you…?"

Garrus, never able to resist a fan, broke out into a grin (at least the closest equivalent to a grin) as he took stock of the young girl. "I'm pretty sure that I am," he wisecracked. "And whom might you be?"

" _Taylor!_ " Sam called over the kitchen counter as he quickly headed over in her direction. He knelt down to her height as he gently looked upon her, partially blocking her view. "I… ah, this is not what—"

"Daddy, you _know_ Garrus Vakarian?" the quarian named Taylor whispered, her neck craning over Sam's shoulder as the adults all towered over her. "And… Liara T'Soni? And… is… is that… _Commander Shepard?_ "

Like mother like daughter. Taylor's reaction was eerily similar to Nya's upon realizing the importance of the figures that were now nestled within their abode. However, unlike Nya, Taylor recovered rather quickly upon seeing the one person she had not yet gazed upon in detail yet.

"Hey there!" Taylor gave a cheerful wave over to Roahn, who had been standing just outside the circle of people that had been slowly congregating over to the kitchen. Roahn, silently relieved at seeing someone closer to her age (finally!), not to mention that it was a quarian to boot, shared the wave timidly, flexing her fingers slowly, almost agonizingly.

Sam's face lit up as he had an idea and he nudged Taylor so that she would glance in his direction. "Taylor, why don't you go and show Roahn around your room for a bit?"

"But… this is…" Taylor's arms helplessly grasped out in all directions, obviously overwhelmed.

"Taylor, I really do think that you should keep Roahn company. Be a good host, hmm?"

"Oh," the girl answered, slightly crestfallen. "'Adult talk,' right?"

"Yep. 'Adult talk.'"

"Okay," Taylor hung her head, but did not seem all that dejected. Kids had the ability to switch moods on a dime and Taylor amply demonstrated that by quickly skipping over to Roahn, taking the girl's hand, and leading her back down the hallway from where she had initially entered. Roahn turned towards her father, wanting him to know that this was all right, that she was perfectly fine, but found blankness in response.

Before she could leave, Sam gently caught his daughter's hand. "I want to make this clear. You _cannot_ talk about what you just saw to anyone, understand? Absolutely no posting of this to social media. Not a peep."

"Anyone?" Limpid eyes pleaded.

" _Anyone_ ," Sam sternly confirmed. "If you disobey me, you'll be saying goodbye to your video game privileges until you ship off to a university."

"Until I leave the house?" Taylor was momentarily taken aback before she relaxed. "Yeah right."

" _Taylor_ …"

"I got it, I got it," the girl relented, but not before affording half a second to roll her eyes. Parents could be so strict sometimes!

After the children had left, Shepard released a breath he had not realized he had been holding. "Thanks for that," he said to Sam. "I wasn't sure how I was going to distract Roahn for this next part."

"Ah, don't mention it," Sam shoved his hands into his pockets. "Taylor's been on vacation for the past week anyway. She's been dying to have a playmate over—all of her friends are out right now hopping across the galaxy while we're staying at home."

"You caught me off guard again," Shepard admitted as he leaned into the counter. "The first time we talked, you mentioned your daughter's name: Taylor."

Nya laughed from the back. "Wasn't expecting her to be a quarian _either_ , huh?"

Shepard chuckled, partially ameliorated. "It _is_ a human name."

Nya just shrugged as she rummaged behind the counters for a few glasses. "Sam had a sister named Taylor," she explained. "But she died before I had even met Sam. He told me her name and… well I suppose I liked it so much that I wanted to name my daughter after her. So much for quarian praxis."

The sleek and slender quarian then lightly set five glasses upon the black stone counter, all of them neatly catching the intense light that shone down from the fixtures, sparkling off of the corners of Nya's spotless helmet.

"So, does anyone want a drink?"

* * *

Upon entering Taylor's room, Roahn had to take a moment to stop and gape at the sight, for she realized that the room itself was a far cry more vibrant and personalized than what she had been used to. This was not a point of contention for Roahn, nor could she derive any jealousy, as the depth of aesthetic modification on Rannoch had been so limited that she had no idea that such extensive decorating was possible.

The theme of black tile with cracked embossed white creamy lines carried over into this room, as did the smooth and cloudy walls from the rest of the house, but that was where the similarities ended. Along the far wall sat a low bed, wide enough to fit three people Roahn's size, which was situated upon a thin carpet the color of bark. The mattress of the bed looked particularly firm, and a comfortable bevy of pillows nestled near the leather headboard seemed particularly inviting. After spending the last couple weeks being crammed into a cot on board a spaceship, perhaps even a rock would seem like an upgrade to Roahn.

Twin light fixtures, oddly shaped in a link of chains, flanked the bed. Intricately constructed shelves, each one glowing with a fierce azure light, spanned the length of the nearby wall, upon which an extranet console was situated. On the console's screen, Roahn could see that Taylor had been playing some sort of turn-based strategy game—aliens vs. aliens, that sort of thing—as the pause menu was impatiently pulsating in the background, awaiting for the player to return.

There were a few glossy posters crudely stuck upon whatever bare stretch of wall had been previously present. Roahn recognized a few of them as being advertisements for recent movies, but some of the placards depicted what appeared to be names of bands that Roahn had never even heard of before, nor could fathom what the imagery here was trying to represent. Like this one: it depicted a winged angel of some sort with the title of the band referencing an aeronautical device made out of a rather dense metal. Or this one, that showed a sea creature rising from the ocean, threatening to upturn a nearby boat as psychedelic colors all swirled around the maelstrom depicted within the poster's boundaries (but since the name of the band itself seemed to be indicating an extinct and hairy mammalian Earth creature, Roahn was rather confused by the incongruence between the images of the poster and the band that it was supposed to be representing.)

"They're my dad's," Taylor nodded towards the posters, aware that Roahn was intrigued by the decorations. "He has this really big catalogue of all these old bands. Some are even like a couple hundred years old, you know? He doesn't like modern music all that much. I think it rubbed off on me a bit, because they're all he played when I was growing up."

"What sort of music do they play?" Roahn asked.

"Rock, mostly. For the most part, none of them use any virtual instruments to make the music, which is why I think dad likes them so much."

"So you're dad's a doctor, then?"

"Yep," Taylor said proudly. "Works on the Citadel and everything."

"Is he like a… a general practitioner or something?"

"He told me the word a few weeks ago," Taylor's eyes scrunched up in thought. "An… arthroscopic surgeon. That's what he is! What he does is he treats damaged joints. But he's been working to add other practices to his skillset, he told me."

Roahn shrugged thoughtfully. "Seems more interesting than what _my_ dad does. He sort of… finished up his work before I was born. He doesn't do anything particularly special these days."

"Funny. I would have thought that being _his_ daughter and all would _be_ something special."

The inflection in Taylor's words had been placed there, making it unmistakable to Roahn as to what the other girl had meant.

"That's what everyone expects, it seems," Roahn turned around from the posters and glanced back at Taylor, who had sat down upon the bed to consider her new guest. "It's what I've had to deal with all my life. Even before I left Rannoch, there was always this assumption towards me that I was always destined for greatness, because whenever people looked at me, they expected me to be like my mom or my dad. ' _The daughter of Tali'Zorah and John Shepard,_ ' I would always hear people whispering. As if they didn't expect me to be my own person!"

Taylor absorbed this considerately and gave a slow nod, scooting over to allow Roahn to sit down beside her. "Did you ever feel that your parents were among those that expected great things from you?"

"No," Roahn emphatically replied as she took the offered seat. "They _never_ pressured me that way. I mean… well… my dad sort of does. He constantly stresses that I need to be _better_ than him, but I know he's not trying to make me play the part of someone I'm not. He just wants to prevent me from making the same… mistakes he did."

"It kind of sounds like he knows you better than anyone else, then. That is, if he's only asking you _that_ of you…"

"I guess that's one way of putting it," Roahn had to admit. "For all his faults, he's never coddled me or idolized himself to me. He hates excess attention, especially from what he did in the war."

Taylor bumped her eyebrows behind her golden visor. "That's probably the first time I've ever heard someone indicate that Commander Shepard has _faults_."

"You live with him long enough, you'll figure them out rather easily," Roahn sighed, perhaps with a bit more bitterness than she would have intended, but it was too late to take it back. "I've had to put up living in his shadow a lot more frequently now. It gets exhausting. Everyone I meet, all of his friends, they all treat me different because I'm his daughter. They think him infallible and therefore think that I'm infallible as well. It's like I'm the only one who can see my father clearly and that everyone else is deliberately blinding themselves. It's almost… enraging."

Roahn's fists were clenching again, not escaping the eye of Taylor, whose glowing gaze noticeably angled downward upon seeing the slight movement in the corner of her vision.

"How much does he talk about himself to you?" Taylor suddenly asked after a tense moment.

"Huh?" Roahn snapped out of her brief funk, having missed the question.

"I was just wondering, if you think that your father recognizes your plight. I know you said that he never brags about himself, but do you think there's a reason for that?"

"I… never really thought much about that," Roahn said rather blankly. "But I know he had his reasons for not… opening up to me all that much before. Even if some of his reasons were… wrong."

That did not seem to faze Taylor at any rate. "It kind of sounds like he's giving you the chance to be your own person, actually."

"What do you mean?"

"This is Commander Shepard we're talking about. Perhaps the most famous man in the galaxy. If he hasn't been recanting his legend to you every night, then it sort of sounds like he's making an attempt for you to grow at your own pace. To have… clear eyes, so to speak. I mean, you yourself mentioned that everyone you meet seems to look upon your dad and see no flaws. Maybe your dad feels that it's more important for you to draw your own conclusions rather than being told what to believe. That's my thinking, in any case."

The simplicity and clarity of the deduction struck Roahn down to the bone. She gave a slow blink as she tilted her head rather apprehensively. "You're probably the first person other than my father that I've been able to have an actual conversation with."

"You can blame _my_ dad for that," Taylor laughed. "There are times when he likes to embark in philosophical conversations with my mom around the dinner table. When I got older, he started roping me in too. Heh, but now he says that I've become too argumentative for my own good."

"Seems like your life is a bit less… stressful than mine, though."

"Would I regret it if I said that I wouldn't mind trading a few days of your life for mine?"

"Mmm," Roahn playfully appraised the ceiling. " _You_ might. I won't. All things considered, I could use a break."

"I suppose that's fair."

Roahn let out a tiny sigh, but gave a quick start when she felt a hand lightly set upon her shoulder. She looked up to see Taylor staring intensely into her eyes, her gaze ever so slightly lidded upwards—a serene smile.

"Hey," Taylor whispered, "sometimes it's good to talk about these things."

The girl then moved in close to Roahn before giving her a hug.

There it was again. That feeling of being cherished. A much-needed sensation. How did _that_ work? She hardly knew this other girl, but after talking to her for a few minutes, it felt like she had known her for her whole life. Roahn blinked in alarm as a few tears slipped from her eyes, but she quickly recovered enough to return Taylor's gesture, so thankful for the girl's kindness.

"Thank you," Roahn dipped her head after the two had broken apart. "For… for listening."

Taylor shuffled her feet, suddenly shy. "It's the least I could do."

"I'm serious. It's rare to find someone I can open up to like this."

"Then… I'm honored to be one of those people," Taylor said.

Both girls smiled bashfully, now a bit conscious of the implications of their little heart-to-heart. Keelah, it was a good thing that there weren't any adults in the room. That would be hard to explain.

Roahn then tilted her head, wanting to move away from this conversation, as she indicated towards the paused game screen that the console was still displaying upon the desk. "What game were you playing before we got here?"

Taylor hopped off the bed and sat down in front of the screen, showing Roahn how the game worked. "It's called Cosmic Stratagem. Heard of it?"

"Can't say that I have." Anything to steer the conversation in a more casual direction.

"It's super fun, but super addicting," Taylor then began tapping upon the holo-keys expertly as she maneuvered the virtual camera around what appeared to be a representation of a fantastical military base. Roahn had not played many of these sorts of games before, but from what she could tell, this game took place in a fictional universe that pitted aliens against aliens in a rather complicated war. The plot was not of much concern to her, but Roahn had to admit that there was definitely an allure from being entrenched so firmly within the strategy of the game, trying to figure out which course of action would bring about victory.

"There are two types of units, you see: civilians and military," Taylor was now pointing to the screen. "The civilians gather resources for the military to build, but the civilians can only get these resources at certain points on the map, like at terraforming hubs or at asteroid mining facilities. Whatever you create, such as minerals, heavy metals, noble gases, all flows to the production of military units, which are—"

Taylor trailed off as she noticed that something else had grabbed Roahn's attention. Perched upon the shelves that had been bolted to the wall above the video game console was a particularly impressive array of miniature figurines, each one impeccably detailed and popping with iridescent color. Every single figurine had been positioned in such a way that the spacing was all even and that they were all facing towards the person sitting at the desk, implying that meticulous thought had gone into their placement.

Roahn had no trouble recognizing the figurines. That was because she had owned most of them at one point.

They were all, unmistakably, the representations of the Normandy crew.

"Ah," Taylor said as she paused the game once more and got up from her seat. She reached up and plucked the Urdnot Wrex figure down from the shelf and absentmindedly turned it in her hands. "My collection. It's something that I've been working at over the years."

"I used to have one just like it," Roahn murmured sadly as she stared at the poses of the crew in their warlike stances.

"They just came out with the fifth generation. New stances and complementary figurines. I think that Grunt gets a varren, Legion gets a turret, and Tali gets a…"

Roahn had held out a hand as she plucked a very familiar looking figure from the shelf. She had never owned this particular figurine, not because she had not found the time to purchase it, but because she would not have been able to bear allowing it to sit within her room.

The girl slowly rotated the representation of Tali in her hands. The artists that had created this particular figure had done good work—from the creamy white swirls in her _sehni_ , to the finely raised pattern of her enviro-suit's outer layer, to even the ghostly visage trapped behind a barrier of violet glass. The figure portrayed Tali clutching a shotgun in both hands, kneeling as she was ostensibly aiming at an unseen foe, perhaps one unlucky enough to be within point-blank range.

 _It looks just like her_ , Roahn considered as she held the tiny figure in her hands, cradling it delicately.

Watching Roahn, Taylor's eyes shifted to and fro before she lightly held out her hand—a silent offer to take the figure—correctly sensing that the sight of the girl's mother might be welling up feelings that were not appropriate for her to witness right now. Roahn eventually realized what Taylor was asking for and she quietly obliged, giving Taylor back Tali's figure for her to put back on the shelf.

"I wish that I could have met her," Taylor said as she nudged the figurine into the right angle. "She was always my favorite."

Roahn finally mustered a smile at that as she walked back over to the bed so she could sit down upon it again. "She was certainly something. I wish that you could meet her too— _waagh!_ "

Roahn yelped as the cushion that she had positioned her hand next to on the bed seemed to move on its own accord. She jumped off the bed so rapidly it was as if she had been burned. Only then did Roahn realize that the cushion was not a cushion at all, but a living creature—one that was covered in fur and had been curled up, asleep, into a ball this whole time.

The animal simply raised its head, opening its eyes to reveal steel-blue irises, and gave a yawn, showing off a mouth filled with pointed teeth. The creature then blinked in disinterest, its tail giving a singular bob, before it proceeded to ignore Roahn and Taylor and began to clean itself.

"What is that?!" Roahn pointed, not knowing exactly what she should be feeling.

"That?" Taylor asked, the tone of her voice indicating that there was no cause for concern. "It's a cat. Have you never seen one before?"

To show off that there was no danger, Taylor scooted over to the side of the bed and gently picked up the drowsy animal. The cat gave an audible grumble, not wanting to be disturbed, but it was too tired or too lazy to mount an effective resistance, so it simply succumbed to Taylor's manipulations as it was eventually placed upon the quarian's lap.

Now that her fears had been quelled for the time being, Roahn was able to get a better look at the cat that was now stretching its legs while resting upon Taylor's lap. It had a rather triangular-shaped face, its head and paws were the color of soot while the rest of its body had a distinctive cappuccino color. It had a very slender body with hair completely coating near every single square inch of skin. It actually looked kind of cute, even though the expression on the cat's face was approaching one of mild loathing. The purring sound it was emitting did not coincide with what the cat's face was emoting, though, and Roahn did not need to be told that the cat was most likely quite content.

"I've… never had the opportunity to meet one in person," Roahn admitted as she knelt down to look closer at the animal. The cat yawned again before snuggling up in a better position.

"You can pet her if you want," Taylor said as she began scratching the cat behind the ears. "Like this."

Roahn studied Taylor's movements, noting that the purring seemed to be growing in volume and that the cat's eyes were firmly shut in pleasure from all the attention her owner was doting upon her. Apparently light motions like the scratching movement Taylor was demonstrating was enough to garner such a pleasant reaction from the animal.

Tentatively, Roahn reached out and began scratching at the cat where Taylor had previously been working at. The cat cracked one eye open to see just who it was that was touching her. Satisfied that there was no cause for alarm, the eye closed shortly afterward, the cat sinking back into being pampered again.

"She likes you," Taylor said as the cat continued to purr, one of its hind legs twitching.

"She's adorable," Roahn said as she moved to lightly scratch underneath the cat's chin. Responding to the stimuli, the cat lifted her head up, stretching out her neck as she was undoubtedly being spoiled by all of the attention that was doled upon her right at this moment. The animal's paws curled and she gave another light murmur. "What's her name?"

Taylor just made a tiny noise as she stroked the cat's back, exhibiting care and love towards this simple creature whom had surrendered itself completely to her owner. The cat had given Taylor her loyalty in exchange for a home. In this case, the cat was getting the most out of this deal, judging by how it was currently behaving. For a cat, this was the lap of luxury.

"Her name?" Taylor repeated while the cat purred on. "Her name is Tali."

* * *

Sam and Nya had luckily amassed a rather convenient array of dextro alcohol over the years, meaning that Garrus would not be feeling left out when drinks had been offered. It was mostly Nya's private stash, but the distinction was there, regardless. Understanding that potentially getting drunk in a home that he did not recognize would not be a good way to make a first impression, the turian had simply settled for a glass of wine, a Palaven vintage. After all, there was no way that a man of his size could get drunk off of a singular glass of wine. He felt confident in his choice.

Imagine his surprise when Nya casually brought out a bottle of dextro-bourbon and poured herself a few healthy fingers. She added some simple syrup, some bitters, and a dash of fruit juice, giving her one hell of a cocktail. Clearly she was more confident about drinking that Garrus was, and even though he knew he should not feel emasculated by this, Garrus looked down at his glass in a momentary dash of buyer's remorse. The feeling rapidly faded when he took a sip—the wine was tasty in any case. Why should he complain?

Liara had settled for a dry martini, which Sam had whipped up in a jiffy. The doctor then returned to Shepard, having confirmed that he had satisfied everyone else's requests.

"Got a poison in mind, Shepard?" Sam asked.

Shepard, having not been able to procure human alcohol for more than ten years due to him being on the complete opposite side of the galaxy, truthfully had no idea as to what he wanted. "Whatever you're having," he said, wanting to be genial.

"I was going to have a scotch," Sam shrugged. "That all right with you?"

"Scotch is fine."

Sam ducked down to the nearby cabinet and procured a half-empty bottle. "I have to warn you," he said, "It's an Islay. Laphroaig."

Truthfully, Shepard had completely forgotten about the intricacies of scotch whiskies, so that comment meant nothing to him. "I'm good with that."

Shrugging, Sam poured two equal drams of the scotch before stowing the bottle. He made sure to add a few drops of water to each, as a courtesy. Shepard watched Sam take a sip of his drink, noting that the man did not seem to be fazed at all from the bite of the alcohol. Feeling a little cocky, Shepard took a hearty mouthful right at the moment the vapors from the scotch seemed to burrow into his nostrils, already causing them to start burning.

The first damn taste that speared right into his tongue was an initial blast of sweetness followed by thundering waves of smoke and spice. The alcohol hammered his brain like a sack of bricks, nearly causing Shepard to reel. The scotch had a thick feel in the mouth, creamy with wood and… toffee? Then there was the distinct flavor of meat, oddly enough. Sizzling bacon. The meaty taste lingered in his mouth long after he swallowed the scotch, continually rising and mercilessly pounding his taste buds into submission.

However, the intensity of the scotch itself had been so potent that Shepard could not halt the initial cough back. His nose burned and his eyes briefly watered as the scotch practically manhandled him. Pungent and punchy. God, this was strong.

Sam had been watching Shepard's reactions the entire time and could not help chuckling as he had watched Shepard's face radically shift between emotions as he processed the drink. Smug bastard, Shepard figured. That man was well aware that Shepard would have such a visceral response to the scotch.

"Damn," Shepard choked out. "It's been a while."

"Any verdict?"

"I like it," Shepard nodded appreciatively at the drink. "I might have to relearn how to handle stuff like this in the future, but I can definitely get behind this."

He took another sip to emphasize that fact before setting the glass down upon the counter, a light ring acting as a signal to grab everyone's attention.

"I told you all that I had a plan back on Eden Prime," Shepard announced, mainly to Garrus and Liara while Sam and Nya were courteously hanging about in the background. "Now's about as good of a time as any to spring it upon you."

"We talking a firm plan or a tentative plan here?" Garrus inquired before draining a hefty portion of his wine.

"Tentative. It's open to interpretation, which is why I want your opinion. But what I want to accomplish might not be as simple as it sounds. Larsen wants my testimony. I think it's time I finally give it to him."

Garrus and Liara both did a double-take in unison. "That's crazy," Liara murmured. "You're talking about going to the heart of the Alliance, Shepard, in Berlin. That's the most heavily fortified Chimera stronghold on the planet. It will be extremely difficult to even get within a few _miles_ of Larsen, for that's how well he's dug in."

"I've thought about that," Shepard affirmed. "But it's something that has to be done. Besides, Larsen won't be able to resist my invitation if I finally agree to the one thing he's been waiting more than a decade for."

"And if he decides to renege, even though with the auspices of you arriving to provide a testimony?" Garrus pointed out. "What will you do then? You can't possibly hope to face Chimera all by yourself. You'll need an army."

"Or a team," Shepard stroked his beard thoughtfully.

"Or a team," Garrus repeated. "It really wouldn't hurt to ask around, get some other people on board besides me and Liara. Just in case this devolves into an all-out brawl. You'll want some muscle on your side, believe me. You never know, I'm sure that we can arrange ways to get them down to Earth undetected."

"You really think so, Garrus?"

"Positive. I've got all the contact information on my omni-tool for one hell of a team in the making. All I have to do is say the world and they'll all come running."

Shepard straightened up as he reached for his scotch, the burning sensation in his throat a morbid reminder of the grim portents that were managing to encroach upon his mind's eye. So, he was really about to do this again. Gain allies. Work as a unit. Slipping back into this life was as simple as breathing. It was almost alarming at just how natural this was sounding to him, despite a weary and heavy mind constantly hanging upon him.

"This just seems… odd," Nya chimed in, pausing for a second in case she had no prerogative to speak in the presence of the trio. When no one complained, she continued. "What you're saying, that you're just going to barge into the senator's office in Berlin and will forcefully provide your testimony, sounds an awful like you're relying a lot on luck. I mean, what's simply giving your testimony going to accomplish in the long run? You know that Larsen will just suppress anything you say that doesn't fit his narrative."

Shepard smiled as he pointed at Nya in consideration. "Good catch, Nya. I'm glad you noticed that, because I _have_ mulled over the possibility that Larsen might just whitewash the whole thing. But he'll have a harder time of suppressing such information… if the words had come from _his_ mouth."

Liara, next to Shepard, noticeably gave a start. " _What?_ "

"What do you mean?" Garrus asked at the same time.

The grin that Shepard flashed grew just a few millimeters wider. "Larsen might have gotten a little too talkative while I was back aboard that freighter, as a prisoner. True to form, he could not resist giving a monologue about his master plan. However, he didn't seem to take into account that, even though I was physically subdued, I could still access basic commands on my omni-tool."

"You didn't…" Garrus said lowly, a bubble of glee rising from his throat.

Shepard simply raised an eyebrow as he lifted his hand for emphasis, a halo of orange light now levitating just a centimeter above his palm, while a roughened and older sounding voice began to play.

"… _ever since I helped award them the Alliance contract, their involvement is now cemented with this kind of legitimacy in their actions. Koenig just runs the day-to-day operations, but I'm the one who actually mandates where Chimera gets to go."_

"That's Raynor Larsen's voice, all right," Sam rasped by the counter, taking a drink to wash out the taste of the name from his mouth. "No mistaking that obvious timbre."

"And Larsen mentions _Koenig_ , as in Erich Koenig, the CEO of Chimera," Liara snapped her fingers, her face brightening. "Then he actually admits that he has some semblance of control over Chimera's operations! For a senator to have such a huge conflict of interest… Shepard, you've got him!"

Garrus began chuckling as he scratched at a mandible, sinking deeper in thought. "Very clever. You go to Berlin to cement your truth on the record while simultaneously discrediting Larsen in the process. I was a little skeptical before, I'll admit, but now I'm liking this plan more and more. But, do you really have to make such a public display of things? I mean, what's simply stopping you from dropping this recording off at a news center and relying on them to provide the headlines?"

"It needs to be done this way, Garrus," Shepard sighed. "I have to do this publicly, to catch Larsen off guard. He's probably been expecting someone to break the news of his illegal involvement with Chimera for years—he's the sort of person that always looks over his shoulder before making any kind of decision. He'll find a way to evade punishment _only if_ the recording is introduced in play. But if I reveal myself, he won't be able to resist facing me head-on. He won't be expecting anyone else to make any other kind of move. My presence will distract him and that's when we'll hit the world—no, the _galaxy_ —with his confession."

Garrus absorbed this sagely. "Yeah, that seems reasonable. Except there's the fact that none of us have a firm fix on where Larsen actually is. After all, what sort of guarantees do we have that the man is going to be sitting in his office at whatever time we choose to arrive in Berlin? He could be getting dinner down the road, perhaps he might be sick in bed, or he could be in the middle of a meeting with the prime minister."

"He'll be in the Senate building," Sam piped up. Everyone turned to look at him, their expressions quizzical. Sam looked back and forth between the three, even glancing over to his wife who also had an apprehensive look on her face. "Does no one else read the news? All the senators are going to be poring over the controversial CAHMF-1 bill for the whole week. They'll be in the Reichstag every day, I guarantee it."

"CAHMF-1 bill?" Shepard asked. "What exactly is that bill proposing?"

"I forget the smaller details, but basically it's spearheading and initiative to bring about an end to humanity's partnership with the Citadel Council." Sam paused a few seconds for effect before he revealed the next piece of the puzzle. "It's Larsen's pet project. No way that he won't show up to work when his own bill is on the line."

"Hell. Yes." Garrus triumphantly smacked the kitchen counter, creating a hollow ring throughout the house. "We have a plan."

Shepard did not let his enthusiasm show, even though his heart was feeling several tons lighter. There were still so many factors that he needed to consider for this to work, but he was not going to bring the moment down just yet. Morale needed time to fester in its currently positive state.

"I'll make sure that Larsen's whole _career_ will be on the line by the time I'm done with him," Shepard vowed out loud in a near growl. "I guess this is a good place to start. Garrus, go ahead and call everyone you can. Tell them to make their way to… uh, what's the address for the house, Sam?"

"84 Ocean Ridge Parkway, Santa Cruz," Sam said dutifully before shifting his eyes back and forth. "Should I… prepare more refreshments now that we might be getting some more guests? Some pizzas, maybe in order?"

"Probably couldn't hurt. Also, I'm going to need your help for a minute."

"Oh?"

"Yeah," Shepard headed towards the front door, gesturing to the other human with a finger. "There was a case we put in the trunk of your car back when we embarked. Large case, plastic cover. Remember? I think it's time we got it out."

"Whatever you say, Commander," Sam murmured under his breath as he drained his drink, smacking his lips before following Shepard out the door. "Whatever you say."

* * *

Cold, stale air buffeted into Larsen's face as the elevator doors finally parted. The dry scent of snow had become embedded in every square meter of space exposed to the open air. Winter in Germany—always a delight.

The man exiting the elevator did not as much as grimace, except to mull over the inconvenient fact that, despite his Scandinavian heritage, he did not particularly care for the cold these days. Perhaps his tolerance had waned as he advanced in age, or maybe he had finally endured having to put up a stoic face for so long. Either way, the chilly temperatures served to exacerbate Larsen's perpetual foul mood.

Larsen found it odd that he was in such a funk, because he had definitely been able to derive a fair amount of joy from finally being able to knock Erich Koenig unconscious. The last he had heard of the man was that he was still in the hospital, lucid but curiously unresponsive. Apparently he was going to have to wear a neck brace for at least a couple of weeks as a result of his injuries, which were quite severe in nature.

The thought of Koenig looking all stupid in a brace was enough to bring a smile to Larsen's frigid face, no matter how fleeting it turned out to be.

Long, wet echoes were sent calling through the underground structure. The parking garage of the old chancellery building extended many stories down into the ground. In all his years in the government, Larsen had never witnessed anyone desperate enough to park on the lowest level of the garage, which just so happened to be the floor he was on right now. It was just too far down and too out of the way for anyone to justify leaving their vehicle in this location. Larsen knew it was the only place in Berlin that he could have a long and uninterrupted conversation.

Adding to one of the multiple reasons why parking down this far was a particularly uninviting prospect, the lighting in this section was particularly poor. Old halogen lamps flickered uselessly as they tried to combat the inky black shadows that perpetually swirled around this level of the garage. Any attempt at banishing the darkness was an effort doomed to fail as the paltry few light fixtures only provided such spheres of illumination so insignificant that several pitch-black sections managed to waft close by.

It was at one of the sections—the far corner at the very end of the level—that Larsen was walking towards.

Still being touched by the scant few warm particles of light that grasped onto him, Larsen halted in the middle of the garage floor, his hands shoved impatiently into his pockets, while he peered into the cavernous soup of black directly in front of him. He did not have to wait long. Several quiet hissing noises and metallic clomping sounds soon resounded, and a matrix of fueled and enraged optics speared through the perpetual night, marking the thin outlines afforded as the demonic-looking creature emerged from the corner.

The Legionnaire's breath sizzled through his respirators as he halted his stride a meter away from Larsen. The two of them stood across from the other, neither of them saying a word just yet. Each one letting their profound irritation and consternation waft from them in intense waves.

In truth, Larsen was secretly hoping that the Legionnaire would talk first, maybe in the trite attempt to offer some reasoning for the operative's failings. But, as Larsen sadly knew, the Legionnaire had no capacity left over in that brain of his for groveling, so Larsen had to initiate with the next best thing.

The senator held out his arm, flipping on his omni-tool in a smooth motion. He navigated to the desired process with a few flips of his thumb and, after sharing a sinister look towards the Legionnaire, depressed the haptic switch.

The signal took less than a nanosecond to soar through the air and impact upon the transmitter embedded in the Legionnaire's cortex. Upon receiving the signal, nested diodes interspaced within the remains of the gray matter all simultaneously began firing in sequence. Energy danced through flesh and nerve, digging into the most potent of sensations. A crackling haze emitted within the Legionnaire, creating a surge of pain he had not felt in quite some time.

The cyborg roared, the sound nearly quaking the supports of the garage, and fell to his knees with a heavy crash. The Legionnaire slammed at the ground, cracking the concrete below his fists, as his fingers gouged deep white scratches into the floor. The metallic creature retched in reflex, but there was nothing for him to regurgitate. All the while, Larsen stood above him, keeping his hand depressed upon the feedback switch that controlled the Legionnaire's punishment.

Finally, Larsen relaxed the abuse and the diodes ceased firing. The Legionnaire was left shaking on the ground, physically untouched yet hurting all the same.

"I think you can understand why I'm in a less than stellar mood," Larsen's voice bit frostily through the garage while he waggled his hand, the one encased by the omni-tool. "For all my efforts, incompetence is still a virtue that is staining this administration. You had Shepard in your clutches and you let him _slip away_."

The Legionnaire lifted his head up, connecting their gazes, but did not rise to the challenge, remaining maddingly silent.

"I'm sure there is some precedent with regards to what I should do to you in the wake of such a monumental fuck-up," Larsen continued, hand upon his chin, "but I still have a use for your services, so I've been forced to get a little inventive."

"I _know_ what it is that I have to do," the Legionnaire finally grunted. "Guarantee me my final payment and I will see to it that Shepard is returned to Chimera's custody. He cannot hide from us now that he's out in the open. It's only a matter of time."

There was something in the Legionnaire's tone that Larsen did not take all that kindly to. Indignation, malcontent, and just the slightest hint of insubordination. Clearly the cyborg had not figured out the overall tone of what this discussion was supposed to resemble. That had to be fixed. Larsen callously thumbed the control to the device again, sending the Legionnaire into a series of spasms as he was once again plagued by the invisible agony.

It was easy to imagine wisps of steam arising from the cyborg as Larsen envisioned the monster's brain cooking each time he hit the switch. Alas, the energy being emitted through the diodes was too small to do any lasting damage, even when switched on for a lengthy period.

"Dictating the terms of your employ is a power that has _not_ been bequeathed unto you at this time," Larsen snarled as he lifted his thumb away, sparing the cyborg further agony for now. "Yet you seem to have this idea in your head that you can request provisos from me."

"I only want what was promised," the Legionnaire seethed, partially rising once more. "Give me the activation code for my termination sequence. Allow me to finally end this wretched existence. Every single waking moment… is filled with pain. The cybernetics… they did not take to my organs perfectly. But Chimera knew that when they built me. When they took my brain from whatever cadaver they deemed suitable. They didn't need perfection. They just wanted to get as much mileage out of me as possible. Yet it feels like ground glass is continually crushed up in my stomach. There is a constant fire in my brain. Provide me the motivation for this last mission. Vow to free me and I will find Shepard again."

Larsen wryly chuckled and shook his head in the barest gesture of sympathy. "The pain you feel is merely an illusion, Legionnaire. It was _programmed_ within you since the beginning. Chemical balancers, embedded in your chassis, were installed to imbue this very pain upon your nervous system. Compounds are routinely and unknowingly diluted into your bloodstream as an incentive to complete your mission—if an assignment goes unfulfilled, the more pain you feel. The chemicals also dump adrenaline into your system, forcing you to fight and carry out your mission. You are a slave to this directive. You cannot break this sequence because it is imprinted into your very cortex. You won't be able to terminate yourself—even if I gave you the code right now—until you _finish the job_."

There was the sound of wrenching metal and a flat gray blur began to materialize as the Legionnaire unexpectedly sat up and lunged his arms straight at Larsen's throat. The cyborg's fingers curled like talons, arced and glimmering dully in the low light. A preprogrammed noise—a lion's roar—made its way from the Legionnaire's vocabulator as the monster apparently envisioned tearing out the human's throat in one swift blow, expecting a gush of blood to splatter upon the ground in a torrent.

Whatever retribution the Legionnaire had materialized never came to pass, however. The cyborg gave a grunt and abruptly froze in place, fingers quivering just centimeters from Larsen's neck. The Legionnaire growled as he tried to move his body, but for some reason he was now locked in his aggressive position, as if time had decided to stop all on its own upon his particular figure.

Larsen had not even flinched when the Legionnaire had moved to attack him, and he simply sidestepped away from the encroaching arms, giving the cyborg's chassis a light tap with his fingers as his nasty grin broadened—a taunt.

"There were other things that we put in your brain as well," Larsen murmured. "Mental conditioning, for one. We needed to erase the persona you were before you became the Legionnaire. Chimera also made sure that you don't have the ability to retaliate against your superiors. The ones who built you knew that they would need failsafes installed in case they couldn't control you. I'm glad to see that they still work."

To prove his point, the paralysis that had encapsulated the cyborg soon deactivated a few seconds later, allowing him to drop back down to the ground. The Legionnaire did not embark in another futile attempt to attack Larsen—he simply resorted to glaring the full array of his optics towards the human as menacingly as he could.

However, it was hard to be menacing when the antagonist was holding all the cards, a point the both of them now knew intimately as Larsen impatiently tapped a foot upon the concrete, enjoying the deep echoes it made.

"Don't worry," Larsen reassured the Legionnaire in a false tone of calmness, "you'll soon have a chance to reacquire your quarry. Shepard's not one to take so much abuse for so long. He'll make a move sooner or later, and I fully expect you to be waiting in turn."

Now Larsen folded his hands together as he slowly squatted down so that he was at the same height of the cyborg, who was still on all fours, panting and hacking away. "But what happens afterward, depends entirely upon you. I don't _have_ to grant you your death, you know. What would that say about me, if I reward my employees for _failure?_ "

"You… will _have_ Shepard," the Legionnaire growled. "And I _will_ be complete. In the end, you'll just need to find another sycophant for your uses."

"Oh, that's the easy part!" Larsen said genially as he rose, patting the cyborg's cheek in a mocking way of parting. "We'll just have to see how you perform in the end. But you won't have to spare _me_ any worry for when I finally have to discard you. I can _always_ get another Legionnaire."

Turning smartly on a smooth heel, creating a brief screeching sound, Larsen laughed to himself as he confidentially left the cyborg behind. He made his way towards the elevator bay, not once taking the time to spare a wayward glance back at the lackey he had abandoned to languish in the dark.

Watching the senator leave, still propped up on the ground, the Legionnaire saw his fists curl helplessly, but as usual he could not feel the motion or the sensation of the action.

There was nothing _to_ feel, except his smoldering rage.

* * *

 **A/N: Stalwart readers, if you're familiar with some of my earlier work, will no doubt recognize a few of the new characters prominently featured in this chapter. It was such a joy to be able to write them again - you have no idea how much fun I had writing this chapter.**

 **Since we're nearing ever closer to the end, I'm extending another big thank-you to you all for your kind words and support. Every day I'm really touched at how people have enjoyed Cenotaph to this point. I'm just glad that I could be of some entertainment. Keep the comments coming, I want to hear what you think!**

 **Playlist:**

 **A Plan Over Drinks: "Another Egghead" by Justin Hurwitz from the film _First Man_**

 **Legionnaire Tortured: "Space Suicide" by David Buckley from the video game _Call of Duty: Ghosts_**


	20. Chapter 20: The Gang's All Here

_Medical Incident Report – 09/12/2198_ _  
_ _ **Park-Klinik**_ _ **Weißensee**_

 _Name of Patient: Erich R. Koenig  
Patient Care: AlliedHC PPO Plan Tier 1  
M/F: M  
Age: 29  
Weight: 68 kg._

 _Conscious?: N  
Breathing?: Y  
Injury Details: Multiple lacerations to scalp – 13 count. Heavy bleeding. Temporary loss of consciousness. Concussion sustained.  
Mechanism of Injury: Self-inflicted. Unintentional – tripped into glass table._

 _Severity: Priority – YELLOW. Ambulance evacuation required._

 _Prognosis: Motor functionality expected to recover. Superficial damage to spine—splint required. Physical therapy may be an option—determinant on latent damage._

* * *

 _Earth_ _  
UNAS State of California_

The following morning started out rather uneventfully, much to Shepard's relief. After having to endure what was practically a never-ending stream of having to shift his presence from one place to the next on practically a regular basis, it was much appreciated on Shepard's end that he could be afforded a few hours to simply let his mind wander—the fact that he had been granted half a day to mentally unwind while remaining in the same place, not at all hassled, was almost unimaginable to him.

Shepard found it fortunate that he could simply be afforded so much time devoted to getting his head straight and refreshed. Pile on so much stress and eventually people crack. Shepard had been edging closer and closer to that breakaway point, so it was certainly fortuitous that sanctuary had been offered to help cleanse his fretful mind and nurture his mental well-being. It was a good thing that he had run into such gracious hosts to satisfy his state. Sam and Nya were savvy enough to not be too effusive with their praise—they seemed to catch on quickly that blind groveling, despite the fact that Shepard was in fact an idol to these people, would not be of much use here and that Shepard most likely prized being treated like an equal more so than as a superior. The couple had been able to pull out a few inflatable mattresses in his living room to offer their guests a place to sleep for the night, seeing as they did not have enough beds to accommodate everyone. As temporary as they were, the mattresses were perhaps the most comfortable things Shepard had slept on in weeks. It made him yearn for his own bed back on Rannoch, fond memories wisping through his mind.

Ah, his old bedroom. Shepard made a firm declaration to himself to reconstruct that room on Rannoch to the exact same specifications it had been at before it had been unceremoniously destroyed.

First things first. He had a few things to tackle before his peaceful future could be cemented.

Roahn, forgoing the options provided in the living room, had slept in Taylor's room. This was not necessarily a bad thing as the two girls had been quite excited to spend the night together. For kids their age, sleep-overs were uncommon phenomenon that were almost sacred to them—there was an implied deference for the sort of circumstance that allows children of similar age to be in close proximity for such a lengthy period of time. In Shepard's eyes, it seems like the two got along quite handsomely. At the very least, it would allow Roahn further time to cool on her animosity towards him. He was not going to approach her again until he truly felt that they were ready.

But as the morning began to break upon the house, the inhabitants began to wake aimlessly, in a scattershot manner. Sam and Nya were up first, already working to fix breakfast for the other guests in their house. Taylor and Roahn, being kids with high energy, had been awake for a couple hours now, playing video games—judging from the lights and sounds that filtered through the cracks in Sam's daughter's room. Shepard, Garrus, and Liara each woke within minutes of the other, silently filing into the kitchen where their hosts were taking orders for their meals: eggs or French toast (or the dextro equivalent in Garrus' case).

Eating some real food helped to give Shepard additional reason to be at ease, but he was now beholden to wait until Garrus' promised reinforcements would arrive at the house. Knowing public transportation, the bulk of said individuals would not get to this house until the afternoon. That gave him four hours at the minimum to do nothing but wait.

Unfortunately, the sequence of events over the past few days had not helped Shepard's propensity to remain still for very long. Every minute was accompanied by the inane thought that his enemies would somehow find this place and be upon them before they could have a chance to react. That was all balderdash, of course—Chimera had no way to track Shepard in this specific part of the world and they had no reason to suspect that he was on Earth in the first place. Still, Shepard could not help but wonder, much to his own chagrin for being so pessimistic.

Apparently his mood was so obvious that others were taking a keen notice to him, evidenced when Sam spoke up from near the kitchen while he was drying some dishes over the sink.

"Anxious, I take it?"

Shepard took a tiny glance over his shoulder, blinking as stray trails of sunlight diffused in through the patio doors. "What makes you say that?" he half-joked.

"Your pacing back-and-forth has practically etched a trail in the carpet."

Shepard looked down and indeed saw that there was a tiny depressed rivulet that had been smashed into the springy surface. Sheepish, he attempted to laugh at himself. He must have been going at this for longer than he had thought.

"Is the media's fabricated image of me falling apart at the seams, Sam? Intrigued to see that I apparently have the ability to feel fear?"

The man shrugged, unseen as Shepard had been facing in the opposite direction. "It makes you more relatable, if that's any consolation. Besides, I know what it's like to be in tense situations like the one you're going through. After all, I was in London during your final push. I can empathize."

Now Shepard turned fully around, arcing an eyebrow. " _You_ were in London? During the war?"

"I was a medic for the militia. Seattle to Wyoming, and finally to London. Nya was there as well—this was before we were married. Our unit was mixed together during the chaos. We spent a lot of that campaign going door-to-door, clearing out the enemy. We operated in parallel to your squad, trying to thin out some of the forces that would come your way. In a sense, we've nearly crossed paths several times already."

"I guess so," Shepard murmured. "But this fear… is different this time around. I'm not doing this to protect life itself anymore. I'm doing this for the one person that I'm still responsible for. And I consistently manage to let her down."

"All parents fear for their children, Shepard. Believe me, it's only natural for us to be afraid for them. They might not fully understand the sacrifices we might have made for their sake, but there will be a time where it all clicks for them. Eventually, you'll get your return. Roahn seems like a bright kid. I know that she'll understand one day. She must."

Shepard dimly nodded as the isolated void of the living room created a vacuum in his ears. " _One day_ …" he vaguely repeated. "She's been my greatest achievement and my greatest challenge, Sam. Perhaps I would think that going to war would be a more predictable prospect. But war and I still need to reacquaint ourselves—otherwise Roahn won't ever have a chance to challenge me again. I suppose that this… is something that I need to get used to once more. Going into battle. It's been a long time since I had to organize and lead an incredibly dangerous mission. Back then, I didn't have much to lose as I do right now. I have people depending on me—family. I can't even imagine what might happen if I _fail_."

Sam managed a sympathetic smile as he went back to drying silverware. "I know it might seem a bit presumptuous for someone like me to state, but speaking as one who has been a big fan of yours for quite some time, I have this feeling that, no matter what, you're going to be able to get the job done in the end. For the sake of you and your daughter, I really do hope that you'll be able to have the chance to put this miserable business behind you."

"That makes two of us," Shepard agreed as he made his way over to the chest-high counter that separated the kitchen and the living room. He then gave the doctor a knowing look. "I know that you're not risking as much as I am, Sam, but I'm rather envious of your ability to stay calm right now. I mean, you're harboring _criminals_ , practically."

"In the eyes of the government, perhaps," Sam pointed out, his tone mild as he did not meet Shepard's eye just yet. "Not mine. Ask anyone and nine times out of ten I'll bet they would jump at the chance to help you out. Because you're _Commander Shepard_."

Commander Shepard. The sobriquet he could never completely extinguish. In the minds of civilians like Sam, and even seasoned soldiers, Shepard now had to accept that shrugging off his former title was an exercise in futility. Even now more than ever, there was little use in attempting to deny who he had been, to finally discard that personality in the hopes that it would lead to a better life.

But could he still find that peace without having to tap into that combative side?

Shepard linked his hands and leaned over the counter, wistfully staring off into space. "You know, the last time someone admitted to being a fan of mine to my face let slip that they had a shrine of me at their place."

"What, with a couple of candles and the like?" Sam guffawed.

"Actually, yes," Shepard nodded. "That was exactly how it was described."

"Hmm," Sam shrugged as he still refused to meet Shepard's eye. "You'd be surprised as to how intense fandoms can get. It's only a few steps removed from religion, after all."

Shepard gave a noticeable grimace as he clenched his fists upon the counter. "Perish the thought. Even _imagining_ that there could be a religion of me out there is enough to make my stomach churn."

Sam chuckled lowly as he juggled a few cups while placing them into their proper cabinets. "Not about to take advantage of your standing, eh?"

"No way in hell."

"Now _that's_ the Shepard I've heard of," Sam smiled with a twinkle in his eye, almost like he was privy to an inside joke that Shepard could not comprehend. "Always holding true to his convictions."

"You speak as if we're more than just acquaintances," Shepard narrowed his eyes, suspicious.

 _What to make of this man?_

"From your point of view, we _are_ acquaintances. But for me, things are… a bit different."

"Oh, care to elaborate?"

Sam laughed before shaking his head unequivocally. "No."

"Something that I'm not aware of?"

"Look," Sam set down the glass he had been dabbing at with a cloth and finally fixated his gaze upon Shepard, his face now turning rather serious—a far cry from the genial personality that had greeted Shepard when he had roused himself from sleep, "I can see that it could be rather hypocritical of me to be so smug when it comes to knowing all about you while you know little of me. It's not because of privacy, believe me. It's because the events in my life that have led up to this moment are collectively so unbelievable that at the end, there would hardly be any point in trying to elaborate it all to you. I mean, if your whole story had not been documented as thoroughly as it was, do you think people would believe you if you tried to recant it all?"

"I suppose not," Shepard admitted thoughtfully.

"In your case, you had the benefit that people were keeping track of _your_ life story the whole way. I was never subject to such scrutiny. Hell, I don't even think I'd like being in the spotlight at all. But ask anyone in this family: we _all_ know you, Shepard. Your name is placed into the minds of every new child born on this planet today. Why? Because the best stories are the classic kinds of battles between good and evil. Heroes and villains. Our idols are glorified while our enemies are forgotten. Events have already been set in motion that are adamant at securing your name in the pages of history until the end of time, Shepard. I'm just a man who's content with his lot in life. A face in the crowd. Who are you to remember every solitary detail about a face in the crowd? You cannot promote every human who has ever lived and expect us to remember a list of names. Yet, if you promote one person on _behalf_ of every human, then everyone will retain that one name."

Sam eyed the silent commander as he proceeded to dry dishes once again, his voice taking on a lower timbre. "Everyone knows who you are, Shepard, and I don't envy you one bit. We simply want the same thing: living out a life of peace. All that matters to me now is having a stable job so that I can provide for my wife and kid. I cannot afford to wallow in my past. The best thing for me, in this case, is to leave it behind."

 _Then you're lucky_ , Shepard strongly considered uttering out loud, but understandably held back. Sam did have a point—people like Shepard had their own little quirks and idiosyncrasies that they might want to keep close to the chest out of habit. Of course they would find some trepidation into wearing their heart on their sleeve so blatantly—the media had done an admirable job in trumping up Shepard's complete history for the entire galaxy to peruse at their leisure. Shepard's entire existence was hopelessly rooted to the past no matter how hard he tried to stay in the present. The war. Tali. The list of his achievements made public went on. There was a part of him that knew he was never going to shed that bond holding him back. There were too many good memories left behind for him to give up searching for them.

A tenuous silence passed between the two men, as if both were slightly embarrassed at the little window that they had allowed into their true selves, frightful what it might reveal about them. In time, the stressful feeling evaporated, and soon Shepard felt another line of inquiries forming in his head.

"Can I ask you something, Sam?" Shepard straightened up from the counter.

"By all means."

"I've just thought of a list of things that I need to get done before the people that Garrus called arrive. I know it sounds weird, but you wouldn't happen to have a razor handy, would you?"

Sam jerked a thumb towards the hallway. "There's one in the bathroom. Top shelf, between the sinks. Planning on freshening up before your friends arrive?" The doctor motioned to his own thick beard for emphasis.

"Something like that," Shepard affirmed, his own fingers mimicking the motion by running through his stark-gray facial hair. "And… I have no idea if you can help me with this or not, but do you have any sort of weapons in the house that you'd be comfortable with letting me borrow?"

The sparkle that lit up in Sam's eyes was declarative enough for Shepard to realize that he had sprung upon something here. Sam merely gestured for Shepard to follow and they eventually shuffled out to the garage, whereupon Shepard found himself situated in front of a rather large wall safe, partially concealed behind a concrete slab that only moved out of the way after its owner had keyed a hidden control in his omni-tool.

The gun rack that was now exposed was not all that substantial, but it was definitely more than Shepard had initially expected. Until their previous conversation, he had not thought that Sam would have amassed any weapons at all. He did not carry the air of someone who was particularly intrigued with that sort of thing. Regardless, Shepard was pleasantly surprised to see that Sam had a modest collection for him to peruse: three assault rifles, four pistols, a shotgun, two long-range rifles, and even some collector's items that Shepard had never laid eyes on before.

"A few of these are Nya's," Sam said conversationally as he pointed out the weapons in question, "but you're free to borrow the rest."

 _It just keeps getting better and better_. Shepard reached out and naturally gravitated towards the closest weapon and lifted it out from where it had been hanging upon the wall: a matte gray Avenger assault rifle. He tested out the slide for the thermal clip, finding it smooth and well oiled. The trigger was crisp and had a clean break. It was configured for automatic fire—not uncommon, seeing as automatic weapons were legal for civilian owners in the Alliance provided one had all the right permits. In any case, the Avenger was the one rifle that Shepard was used to the most, as he had one just like it during his many campaigns in the Reaper War.

"Do I want to know why you have a small arsenal hidden away in your house?" Shepard joked as he fiddled with the sights on his rifle.

Sam did not seem to take the joke in stride—actually, he took its meaning quite literally. "I've had some bad run-ins with the in-laws, let's just say."

Shepard's unexpected snicker made its way past his mouth and Sam similarly buzzed with silent chortles. "You're laughing _now_ ," the doctor continued, "but that's the truth."

The chuckling stopped and Shepard could not help but do a double-take in Sam's direction, who was quite plainly staring right back at him, deadly serious.

"Do I even want to know?" Shepard asked.

Sam pulled an apologetic face as he shrugged. "Probably best for the both of us if you didn't."

"Fair enough," Shepard mused as he set to concentrating the bulk of his mind onto the weapon in his hands. Little did he know that he would spend a number of moments throughout the day wondering about the eccentricities of his enigmatic host, trying to decipher whether his words had different layers of meaning hidden within, or if he was just talking good old-fashioned bullshit.

* * *

Shortly afterward, Shepard then set about to the task to finding his daughter and getting everything ready for when the house would be rushed by a bevy of familiar faces. Liara had indicated that she had last seen Roahn wandering the grounds outside the house—apparently wanting to get some fresh air. Shepard was, of course, a little apprehensive that his daughter was outside without any adult supervision, but he forced himself to calm down and not blow a gasket. There was a very good chance that the girl was fine. Probably.

Fortunately, the moment Shepard stepped outside and into the California redwoods, he was able to see where Roahn had gone, as flashes of her blue _sehni_ scattered through the trees as she had perched herself atop a small crest barely a few feet higher in elevation, several meters away. Roahn seemed deep in thought as she paced back and forth, a few items clutched in her hands. Shepard, reassured that his daughter was back in his line of sight, shoved his hands into his pockets and slowly trundled in her direction, taking in the sights and sounds of the forest as he traveled.

The air was cool and moist at this level—the towering trees did a very good job in trapping the humidity. Every breath felt thick, pungent with the cloying scent of decay. Fungal. Herbal. A bevy of strong bouquets that coalesced into an intense aura that seemed to permeate every cubic inch of the area. The ground, springy and coated with ferns in all directions, was slightly damp—continually soaked by the amount of rainfall the forest received. Considering how thick the undergrowth was down here, Shepard found that he did not have to travel all that far before the majority of the house behind him would be swallowed up by the incumbent foliage. Good thing that Roahn had kept relatively close.

As he approached his daughter, Shepard saw Roahn raise her hands as she tightened up her stance a bit. Shepard recognized the pistol clenched tightly in her hands as well as an assortment of cans a little more than half a dozen meters away from her position, all lined up evenly on a fallen log several paces away. Shepard stopped walking and observed Roahn at a distance, watching her intently as she began to embark on a bout of target practice.

The pistol in Roahn's hands barked, but the forest was so thick that the sound was easily absorbed within a small radius from the epicenter. Still, the noise did cause a few birds to jump from the above branches, squawking in annoyance. Ignoring the disturbances she was causing to the fauna, Roahn adjusted her aim as she locked her eye behind the pistol's iron sights, lining up to take another shot.

Shepard tracked the trajectory of the bullet that Roahn sent colliding right into the log. Woodchips and bits of fungus flew in a brownish cloud, but the rest of the cans remained intact. Roahn quietly cursed to herself before taking another shot in anger, this one going wide and merely ruffling the leaves on an innocent fern several yards back.

"You have too much slack in your right arm," Shepard pointed out, nearly causing Roahn to jump in place. She looked at him blankly as he moved forward, his posture neutral and his tone helpful. "Try to make sure that your elbow is rigid and locked nearly completely. Imagine that you stiffen up your joint at ninety percent efficiency. Too much rigidity and you'll end up hurting yourself from the recoil. Too little, and that spoils your aim for the next shot."

Roahn's only response to this was a slightly passive nod and the girl glanced back at the makeshift range she had set up, raising her gun for another crack at the hapless cans.

"Remember, you have all the time you need," Shepard softly assured Roahn.

The girl slowly blinked, taking a deep breath to quell her nerves. Her arms slowly stopped shaking. She maneuvered her finger so that it was just barely resting upon the trigger. The middle dot of the iron sight slowly slid over the first can upon the log, obscuring it. All the muscles in Roahn's body froze, her lungs felt like they had all the oxygen they needed, and her blood pulsated throughout her whole body in a steady beat. Calmly. Reassuringly.

Roahn's finger pulled back ever so slightly.

The gun discharged and bucked backwards, the recoil easily absorbed by Roahn's arms.

Another blink and the first can had vanished from the log, still sailing high in the air in a wide arc, tossed upward from the kinetic force of the bullet.

A smirk graced Roahn's lips momentarily. Turning morose as the present was allowed to invade her thoughts again, the girl sighed as she delicately flipped the safety of the pistol back on so that she could reattach it to her hip. Gazing solemnly outward, Roahn went to collect the can from the forest floor, the one she had shot away. It would not do to litter on such a beautiful planet like this.

Once she had plucked up the can from where it had been deposited, after having to brush aside a gigantic banana slug that had initially claimed the can for itself, Roahn came back to deposit the container near where she had been initially shooting, a ragged hole having punched clean through the thick plastic. She would discard it for good once she was done here.

Shepard had been silently brimming with satisfaction at Roahn's display of her abilities that he nearly missed what she would suddenly utter right out of the blue.

"I shot someone."

Jerking his face towards Roahn, concentration steeled Shepard in place as coldness radiated throughout his body. "What, like right now?"

"No," Roahn shook her head as she stared off into space, looking upon nothing in particular as her empty hands dangled at her sides. "Back on that ship. When I was trying to get you out. I didn't tell you right away. I… I shot a man."

Some part of Shepard had to have realized that this might have been a particular conversation that definitely had the potential to crop up, but never would he have guessed that it would be this soon. He was unsure of how to take this information, much less how to react, so he kept his face stoic, unchanging, as he forced himself to absorb what his daughter had said very gradually.

"He was… trying to hurt me," Roahn managed after a few seconds of silence once it was certain that Shepard was just going to let her speak. "I don't know what would have happened if I had… if I… if I had let him… get me. I- I-…" the girl breathed haltingly, almost in a panic, "…I shot him in the leg. Blood started pouring out. I think I severed an artery. He got weak he couldn't stop wobbling. He fell into a vat of cooling liquid. I killed him… with this."

Roahn raised her hand, the pistol lying flat upon her palm. She offered it towards her father, as if she thought that she was no longer worthy to carry such a weapon on her, that she had disrespected Shepard's intent when she had turned it upon a living being. He had been right all along—this was a tool meant to make people _die_. Why should she continue to have it if she never fully appreciated its power?

Yet Shepard did not take the gun from Roahn. Instead, he merely crossed his arms and trudged a few feet over towards a weathered boulder, one that was at the perfect sitting height. Making no noise as he lowered himself upon the stone, Shepard continued to stare at Roahn all the while, keeping his behavior considerately muted.

"Do you think that I should be mad at you?" Shepard whispered.

A tad dumbstruck, Roahn lowered the arm with the pistol as she struggled to find a response that matched this deviation in the narrative.

"I don't know," Roahn timidly admitted. "I mean… I… I _killed_ someone, dad."

Shepard deliberately scratched at his chin, considerately trying to formulate a course to lead the girl towards his own wavelength of understanding.

"Someone who was trying to _hurt_ you. From what you said, you were merely defending yourself. Why should I punish you for something like that?"

"It's just…" Roahn sighed, "It was the one thing that you ever told me explicitly never to do when we were on Rannoch. It was your biggest fear that I would hurt someone with a gun. I just… I don't know why I shouldn't expect any other reaction."

Shepard agonizingly rubbed his hands together before motioning Roahn to sit beside him. She did so tentatively, haltingly, every little motion of her body jerky with nerves. Did she think he was going to explode at her when her guard was finally down? Was her father truly that twisted of a person to strike when she least suspected it?

"Roahn…" Shepard's voice turned tender. "My Roahn. I was only afraid that you would grow up too fast. I could not abide to have your childhood taken away from you, to have it corrupted by the violence that took me when I was your age. I grew up on a ship in deep space, constantly under the threat of attack by raiders. Conflict surrounded me from the day that I was born. I swore to your mother that you would have a better chance than either of us did. Yet our ability to control that part in your life has been snatched from the two of us. We've had to take long looks at ourselves over the past few days. Am I sad at some of the things you've had to witness? I am. But I'm _not_ disappointed in how you've handled yourself. I can't be mad at you for that."

"But still, I shot—"

"You shot someone because you had no other choice. I know it feels horrible—believe me, I know that better than anyone else—but it was _the right thing to do_ , Roahn. If it comes down to it, I would expect nothing less than for you to lash out with all your strength in order to fight for your life. And you did just that. Superbly so."

"I felt sick," Roahn murmured as she let her head droop downward a few degrees. "I felt like I wanted to throw up afterward. I was… it… it was awful, dad."

"It's not supposed to feel good. That part is normal."

The girl looked down at her hand as she consciously made the motion to flex every individual finger in sequence, feeling each strand of muscle tense up as the limb obeyed her commands.

"Blood's on my hands. Same as yours. It will never wash off from me now."

Roahn looked over at her father, perhaps in some way hoping for his affirmation, but he stayed maddingly quiet. Fearful at supplying his opinion or did he have another intent altogether? The man appeared to lose focus for a few seconds before recovering enough to maintain an air of lucidity.

"Someone once told me," he finally uttered, "that one of the worst things a parent has to suffer is knowing that they passed on their guilt to their children. For all your life, Roahn, I had tried my damnedest to make sure that wouldn't happen. The failing is not on you, but on me. My efforts in restricting you was a reaction of rashness. I gave no thought as to how it would affect you growing up, but I've since realized that it only presented you with a skewed view of the galaxy… and of me. Your mother—Tali—she knew that better than I did, but her willingness to abide by my wishes hurt her every day until it was too late. All I can do now is mourn her for my mistakes, but that does not mean that you should be living in grief too."

"I don't know how…" Roahn squeaked out, flashes of her mother standing above her spat out in rapid-fire in her head, recalling old feelings of Tali grasping her hand as her mother's delightful voice spoke sweetly to her. Her recollection merely served to draw out tears from the girl's eyes. "I miss her so much."

"So do I. But I know for certain that if she could see you now she would be so _proud_ to realize just what sort of a person you're growing up to be. It's the same pride that… that _I_ have for you."

"Y-You…?" Roahn could scarcely formulate the word, for she had swiveled her entire body to face Shepard, who had undoubtedly detected the gravity of his statement beforehand and had etched his face out of stone in preparation for his daughter's disbelief. "You're… _proud_ of me?"

 _Proud_. Her father never doled out such praise upon her before. The very word weighed heavily in her mind, rooting her to the spot. She nearly reeled upon the rock she was sitting on, still trying to process how she should be feeling. This word, from the mouth of the man she knew as her father—a man she loathed in some small way, but inexplicably still cared about—was almost too much to bear.

"I think that anyone else would feel the same," Shepard said earnestly. "Roahn, it's our _actions_ at the most trying moments that give us some clues as to what we are truly capable of. This whole time, you've been pushed so hard to embrace the unknown, to step outside of the comfort zone that had been built around you, and not once have you faltered. You've been tested for so long and yet you have remained true to yourself. You even risked your life to help me when I needed you the most. I… you can't begin to imagine just _how much_ pride I have for you, Roahn. I've _always_ been proud of you—because you're my daughter."

Shepard then placed a hand upon Roahn's shoulder before the young girl could instinctively flee from embarrassment, not at all used to the sort of tone that Shepard had adopted right about now. She flinched from his touch, not out of fear, but out of chagrin that she was not in fact particularly worthy of his esteem.

The tangible friction in the air was mercifully disrupted as a smattering of quail burst from their hiding spot near a circle of springy trees, flying upwards to roost upon a branch. The sudden noise had the effect of startling both Shepard and Roahn, jerking them out of whatever paralysis had come upon them at the moment. Shepard gave a crooked smile and Roahn similarly breathed a nearly silent laugh of her own, each a little flustered at getting surprised so easily.

"You know, Roahn, once this is all over, and we get to return back to our lives, you realize what that will mean?"

"No," she truthfully admitted.

Shepard allowed his smile a few more seconds. "You will. You're your own person. You can be anyone you want to be. I just hope that… in time you'll be able to forgive me as you get older. Maybe that's too much to hope for. At the very least, I'd like for you to understand me. You have the potential to be more perceptive than anyone else about me. Good and bad, I'm grateful that you got to see it all, no matter how painful it was for us."

Roahn chewed her lip as she mulled over her father's words. She knew that she was in the presence of the humble Shepard. The pious Shepard. In moments, he could flip his emotions on a dime to slide smoothly back into the steel-edged soldier again, yet he chose to disarm himself before her. Trust or foolishness on his part? Was this all part of the forgiving process? Was she being tested? Roahn's fingers scraped at the rock she was sitting upon as she struggled how to piece apart the layers of Shepard's intent, if there were any.

"Whatever happens," Shepard continued, "I'm glad that I got to share these moments with you. And although it might not seem like it, I'm thankful that you're in my life and…"

 _Here we go_ , Roahn thought, bracing herself for a tangentially related musing to serve as a coda. Knowing her father, the attempt at establishing warm sentiment would probably fall flat on its face.

"…I love you."

The woods immediately deliquesced into a slurry of meaningless shapes and colors all around her. Low thrumming began to buzz deep within her ears, right next to where her eardrums were, it seemed. Whatever light that managed to seep through the trees above felt boiling and blinding. Her stomach instantly tied itself up in a knot. Ever so slowly, Roahn began to lean back.

Two years. It had been two years since she had heard those words come from her father's mouth—and Roahn could not necessarily remember if they had been directed at her so long ago.

All this time…

Two years.

 _He… he… he truly means it._

Roahn was shocked beyond the point of tears. Catatonia seemed like the next best option for her. Eyes wide, mouth agape, breathing shallow. Everything in Roahn's body started to dull—the kind of tingling feeling that one might similarly feel after one too many beers at the bar. Eventually, the combined fatigue took its toll upon the little girl and she slumped, the energy having been sapped from her.

All of this happened in the span of several seconds and Shepard was not blind to the fact that clearly the fallout from his statement was rather potent to Roahn. He knew exactly why that was, which was partly why he had deliberately said those fateful words. There would be nothing else that he could say that could hope to ease Roahn back to reality, but actions could. His face calm and sympathetic, Shepard slowly stood from the boulder and tenderly pulled in Roahn for a gentle embrace, softly pressing the side of the girl's helmet against his large chest.

Limply, haltingly, Roahn managed to detect sensation blossoming in the tips of her fingers again. Very carefully, she raised her arms up, as if they were acting of their own accord, and very nearly managed to wrap around Shepard's waist as she returned the hug.

Breath trembling, eyes wavering, the girl's inherent desire to diminish down to a pinprick in her surprise was prevented from doing so by the strong gravity her father exuded. He was a planet and she was his moon. He was doing his damnedest to make sure that she would not break right before him now, for Roahn had been his own anchor ever since the little girl had been born. She was the last tangible link that tied him to this galaxy. Whatever strength he had left in him, that girl deserved it all.

She was worth everything.

"Dad…" a light whisper floated past Roahn's lips.

"Yes, Roahn?" Shepard answered her, still clinging onto his girl. To her credit, Roahn did not want to break apart quite so soon, either.

"Why did you not tell me for so long?"

"You mean, why did I never tell you that I loved you?"

"Yeah."

A conflicted rumble jittered through Shepard's body. "I thought, at the time… you would not have believed me if I had said anything." A morose chuckle followed. "Another mistake."

Roahn then pulled away and hopped off the boulder, almost as if she was looking to leave but she kept her entire stance planted squarely in Shepard's direction, giving no indication that she would unexpectedly flee from his sight.

At last, the urge to do the one thing in her life that had constantly been stressed upon her never to act upon had come. A welling of a particular compulsion crept unto Roahn, driving its incentives into her brain, taking hold with imaginary hooks. It was fantastical and reckless, but somehow Roahn felt that now was as good of a time as any. If her father truly loved her, then he would realize the significance of what would happen soon.

"I want to show you something," she simply indicated as she offered her palm for Shepard to take.

Curious, puzzled, and a bit hesitant, Shepard nonetheless took Roahn's hand, letting her gentle tug be his guide as they traveled down the mossy hill, through the dew-soaked bushes and ferns, and back to the house.

As much as he wanted to ask what Roahn had in mind, he knew that he would have his answer in short order. Wordless, the only sounds that permeated the air were the tweets from the birds and the creaking of the trees above.

Ocean-crusted and light-dappled, the forest emitted a simultaneous groan that filled the remainder of the still air.

* * *

Garrus, nursing a lukewarm glass of water in the kitchen, casually glanced upward at the top of the threshold of the bathroom—the third time in two minutes. His sapphire-blue eyes noted the blinking light of the air filtration system as it calmly strobed on and off. Green for clean. Tight seals, no risk of contamination.

Each room in Sam's house had such a unit parked above every single doorway—a discernable detector that specifically indicated if a room was "clean" or not. The house was designed to seal sections of itself off from each other, becoming an independent component within the main structure, much like how the enviro-suits of quarians had the ability to isolate portions of the suit so that repairs or refinements could be made to them. Obviously the inclusion of such a system was meant to accommodate the handicap Nya and Taylor naturally faced, what with their weak immune systems and all. Sam had mentioned that the house was so meticulously constructed that his family could theoretically walk around the house with their masks off and, even in the presence of so many strangers, suffer very little in terms of side effects.

This little tidbit was nestled in the back of Garrus' mind as he watched the two shadowy outlines faintly stir behind the smoky glass door of the bathroom. Two shapeless forms, separate from the other. Garrus took a tentative sip of his drink. Shepard and Roahn had slipped into that bathroom a few minutes ago and, as far as Garrus could tell, had said nothing at all to the other. The bathroom was not soundproofed, just atmospherically isolated. The turian could tell, from the brief and subtle gestures each person was making to the other, that something heartfelt was most likely occurring behind that door. As curious as he was to find out more, Garrus was sensitive enough to realize that his intrusion would be completely inappropriate.

As he continued to watch, the smaller of the outlines that could be discerned—Roahn—moved their hands up to their face. They appeared to fiddle with something for a second before they pulled away, a blurry but noticeably blue object clutched in the girl's tiny hands. Garrus gave an involuntary gulp as he realized what was happening and momentarily turned in embarrassment.

Curiosity would continue to eat at him and Garrus twitched ever so slightly in his seat as he waited to see the reactions that would inevitably result. Shepard's outline was statuesque—he had not appeared to have uttered a word. Roahn's outline, on the other hand, was ramrod straight and confident, clearly at peace with the action that she had just performed in front of her father. Garrus had to admit, what she was doing was brave and, if Shepard was as empathetic as he remembered, this would be perhaps the most beautiful and selfless gesture of trust that he could possibly hope to witness from his own daughter.

Confirming that fact, the dark form of Shepard, still muted through the translucent boundary, knelt down to take the girl in a hug. Now, muffled voices were starting to become apparent from the bathroom, but at this distance the words were still garbled to Garrus. Regardless, Garrus turned away from the door for good, a tiny murmur of complacency and relief fluttering through his throat.

He had no idea what the future was going to hold for those two, but he had a damn good feeling that everything would turn out fine.

* * *

The house was a bustle of activity for the next few hours as all of the meticulous preparations were slowly starting to come to a head. Liara had departed for the starport fifteen minutes ago—she had taken Nya's truck as she had no idea how to operate the manual transmission on Sam's archaic BMW—once word had gotten through that everyone who was going to make the rendezvous had all packed themselves in on the next flight to Santa Cruz. Everyone else was busy with their own respective duties around the house so Liara had volunteered her services as a carpool driver. She did promise Nya that she was going to bring the truck back in good condition.

In anticipation of hosting several more guests, Sam and Nya had busied themselves around their home as they tried to make everything in tiptop shape—the sort of burden that every host has to undergo. They had activated the cleaning drones, which had mindlessly proceeded to zap every stray bit of dust upon the floor, giving all of the stone counters a much-needed sparkle to them.

They had also stacked a large array of pizza boxes upon the island in the middle of the kitchen, as the two of them had deemed early on that trying to make enough food in their own home to accommodate a presumably large amount of people would be tantamount to insanity. Thus, they opted for the lazy route and ordered food instead. A bevy of options had been provided: cheese, pepperoni, pineapple, and even a few dextro alternatives as even the turians and quarians had determined, upon discovering the sort of invention that was pizza, that they must partake in this culinary phenomenon.

Garrus had changed into his armor, the same gray and blue variant that he had worn during the Reaper War, and had touched up his facepaint, which had been getting a little flaky. Both Roahn and Taylor were similarly wowed by the turian all decked up, and Garrus had humored the girls into recreating some of his more famous poses that had permeated the extranet, much to their delight.

When the clock struck one in the afternoon, there was a very punctual knock upon the front door. Liara was back with the reinforcements. Sam, dressed up in a plaid robe and slippers, not having any time to change throughout the day, grumbled to himself as he headed over to the door to let everyone in. Garrus hung behind the human almost anxiously, keeping his eyes firmly peeled.

The clustered sound of voices of different genders and timbres slammed in from outside. Garrus was barely able to hear Sam's own exclamation of, " _Oh, dear lord_ ," above the din.

Liara stepped in first, a cool smile gracing her features. "I think we picked up everyone we needed," she said, giving a quick nod to the people behind her.

" _Gare!_ " a light voice cried before Sam could suitably respond. A diminutive shape edged past Liara and shot into Garrus' arms. A human. Mid-to-late 30s. A dark stripe etched on her lip—a tattoo of sorts? Sam just stared blankly as the woman held the turian lovingly before standing on her tiptoes to ply him with a passionate kiss. Garrus, undoubtedly enjoying himself very much, closed his eyes as he settled into the embrace.

 _Ah_ , Sam figured. This must be Kasumi Goto—Garrus' wife. Kasumi had been among the second generation of crewmembers that Shepard had overseen where she and Garrus had met for the first time. Kasumi's trade had previously been in the pilfering business but now she enjoyed occasional part time work as a security consultant, pointing out flaws in the defenses of buildings and what not. Obviously it would take a lot of mental gymnastics to picture a by-the-book turian and a glorified looter ending up together, but reality, having its quirky sense of humor, had apparently laid such a path before the two.

The two lovers quickly realized that they happened to be in front of strangers and parted rather quickly. Kasumi flushed a tiny bit, embarrassed, but rapidly recovered as she held out her hand for Sam to shake.

"Kasumi Vakarian-Goto. A pleasure."

"Sam McLeod," the nonplussed human said as he took the master thief's hand. "Knowing my proximity to your husband, I was wondering if I was ever going to run into you."

"A fan, I take it?" the woman mischievously grinned.

"In this house, everyone is," Sam shrugged.

Liara then stepped aside as Nya entered the foyer to lay eyes upon the luminaries that were emerging one by one from the outside. The asari held out an arm to introduce two heavily armored human males, both of them looking sheepish as they craned their heads to take in the atmosphere that the lofty house provided.

"Sam, Nya, may I introduce Kaidan Alenko, Lieutenant Colonel in the Alliance and Council Spectre—"

"How do you do, Nya? Sam?" the first man greeted. His voice was light and slightly weathered. Fine stubble lined his face, yet it was not even close to rivaling the beard Sam or Shepard had. The Lt. Colonel's hair was nearing the limits of Alliance regulations, but it was combed into an impressive coiffure that shone in the low light.

"—James Vega, of the N7 branch—"

"How's it going?" the second man said, a few trails of tribal tattoo ink threatening to crawl up the lightly scarred patch of skin on his neck. Vega was quite the impressive specimen of peak human physicality. Heavily muscled and armed to the teeth, the N7 marine possessed a very observational stare that betrayed an unexpected intelligence behind his bright eyes. Despite his imposing figure, Sam and Nya took a liking the man immediately.

Now a cadre of additional figures, each one more bizarre than the last, filtered in and Liara was nearly unable to keep pace with the introductions.

"—Jack, last name… unspecified, instructor at Grissom Academy—"

If Vega's tattoos could be considered at all obnoxious, then the assortment that nearly covered up every patch of exposed skin on the next guest, a rail-thin woman with the rather masculine name of Jack, would be taken as quite overbearing. Jack wore a pair of combat fatigues coupled with a tight sleeveless shirt which showed off the colorful array of ink that dashed out seemingly meaningless and random symbols over her arms. Her long hair was tied up in a pony-tail, but there was a freshly shaved line that cut a circle around her head, the swath had which been stylized to look like some sort of bar code.

"Hey," she brusquely said to Sam and Nya in turn before she jogged over to Garrus so that she could punch him rather hard upon the arm in greeting. The turian yelped and rubbed at the afflicted spot, but looked upon Jack in mirth as he too took a friendly swing at her. Jack dodged the blow easily and laughed, reaching up at Garrus' head affectionately. The turian glowered but did not utter a word lest he open himself up to a verbal attack.

"—Miranda Lawson, Alliance Intelligence—"

A calm and collected woman, seemingly the opposite of Jack in terms of their attitudes, crisply yet warmly performed the prim and proper introductions to her hosts. Miranda had a rather clipped accent and her rigid demeanor suggested that she was used to leadership roles, but in seconds it was visibly apparent that she was relaxing once she was around such a swarm of familiar faces.

"—Urdnot Grunt—"

Sam did not stick his hand out for fear that the lumbering krogan, who had to duck in order to get through the door, would tear it off on accident. The alien's arms were nearly as thick as Sam's waist—enormous trunks that would have no trouble with engaging in fisticuffs at all. Extremely young by krogan standards, Grunt had regardless reached the apex of his growth spurts, although the crest that typically adorned adult krogan had yet to fully form upon him. The krogan's icy-blue eyes were slit like a snake's and his mouth seemed to be locked in a perpetual grimace.

"Where's Shepard?" Grunt lumbered, wafting his hot breath into Sam's face.

The doctor had to take a moment to compose himself. "Getting himself… ready, I believe."

"Hrrrm," the krogan grunted before he lifted his head in interest, nostrils flaring. "You have food in here?"

Grunt had undoubtedly spotted the pizza boxes all stacked upon the kitchen counter and the krogan was now on a direct course for them, already starting to salivate.

"Yes," Sam called after Grunt, "we were actually going to open those once—"

The krogan had actually stopped paying attention to the human after his third sentence. Grunt proceeded to clomp over to where the first of the boxes had been positioned. Unfortunately for Grunt, whoever had made the pizza boxes had apparently engineered some sort of latch within the cardboard frame, making it difficult for his beefy fingers to simply lift up the top of the lid. But Grunt was not one to let such barriers impede his hunger—instead he just gave a solid yank and clumsily ripped the top of the lid off, exposing what appeared to be a meatball and sausage pizza, the cheese still bubbling on top of it.

Finding the food to his liking, Grunt grabbed at the pie and inserted the boiling food into his mouth, showing little in the way of discomfort. Everyone stared at Grunt, a little dumbstruck at how forward the krogan had been, but he did not seem to either realize or mind what everyone else was thinking of him. All that mattered to Grunt was that his hunger had been sated. A full krogan was a happy krogan, after all.

Liara, frowning, then gestured to the last person in the group, one who had stiffly hung behind the mob, as if they were somehow above everyone else for whatever reason.

"—and lastly, this is Javik. My… co-writer."

Javik was perhaps the most bizarre looking individual out of everyone. His triangular head was made out of a mottled brown carapace with blue-yellow spots that vaguely reminded Sam of a beetle. He wore a kind of armor that looked both futuristic and ancient at the same time—reminiscent of Japanese samurai that had been prevalent on a specific section of Earth a few centuries ago. Javik had four golden eyes—his most distinguishing feature—each one containing two merged pupils.

"You're a Prothean," Sam blankly pointed, forgetting his polite decorum.

"I'm well aware of that," Javik said bluntly as he shouldered past the human. Much like turians, Javik also possessed a slight flanging effect to his voice, but it was with a much more subtle strength than how it was present in individuals like Garrus.

Liara gave an apologetic smile to Sam. "He can be like that," she explained.

"You don't say," Sam said dryly.

The stragglers then moved into the living room, where everyone was starting to help themselves to the offered refreshments. Garrus was attracting a good portion of attention as friends, new and old, congregated together to catch up and swap stories. Sam and Nya hung out behind the kitchen counter, meticulously organizing everything and helping to direct people with their food and drink. The house soon buzzed with voices of varying pitches, peals of laughter being traded back and forth as each individual presumably had a story of their own to tell throughout the years they had spent apart.

"So, where is he?" Jack soon blurted out after the collective conversations had presumably gone nowhere, her husky voice managing to cut above the clamor. "Where's the pretty boy that we came all this way for?"

"Yes," Grunt nodded in agitation. "I want Shepard."

"Impatient, are we?" Garrus teased as he glanced back and forth. "My company is not enough for you?"

Jack rolled her eyes. "I'm not very good at sitting still. You know this, Vakarian. You should also know that, as much fun as you are, you weren't what drew me here today."

"Ouch. My feelings."

"Get over it, you wimp."

Vega, watching the whole thing begin to devolve, shifted his weight nervously as he leaned over in Miranda's direction. "Two minutes in a room together and they're already squabbling?"

"You expected anything different?" Miranda retorted, raising an eyebrow coolly.

"I can always start on _you_ next," Jack spun around as she levelled a finger in Vega's direction, having heard their entire exchange. " _And_ you," she pointed at Miranda, who simply smirked in the wake of the tattooed woman's fiery attitude.

Jack and Miranda's entire relationship had been the epitome of frosty since they had first laid eyes on the other. Miranda had been an officer for the black ops group Cerberus for some time, the same group that had imprisoned and tortured Jack for several years when she had been a very young girl. Naturally, there had been some rabid resentment between the two—Jack vastly distrusted Miranda, never missing an opportunity to call her a Cerberus "cheerleader," while Miranda found Jack to be very unrefined and brash, too quick to anger and rather hard to control. Eventually, stemming from Shepard's perseverance, the two had found a way to exist harmlessly within each other's presence, not exactly forming a liking to the other, but more of a tolerance.

Miranda was at least confident enough to know that her professional relationship with Jack was enough to prevent them from going at each other's throats, which was why she widened her smile purely to see how aggravated Jack could get. The old Jack would have launched herself like a missile straight at Miranda for her perceived arrogance, but instead, the former convict returned the cocky smile, hefting a fist while letting an aura of biotic energy crackle around her knuckles.

"Heh, is it going to be on for us finally?" Jack laughed.

"You might find yourself wanting," Miranda replied, keeping her face carefully stoic.

Despite the perceived danger, Miranda did not raise her hands to begin crafting up shards of dark energy to crest from her body. Both her and Jack were extraordinarily skilled biotic fighters, but Miranda was more focused on technique while Jack's specialty was in brute force attacks. A brawl between the both of them would be hard-pressed and long-winded, not to mention extremely destructive to the surrounding environment.

Then a hard-edged voice from the hallway served to defuse the tension in an instant.

"I would _prefer_ that you not blow up our host's house, if it can be helped."

From out of the hallway strode an imposing figure that immediately commanded everyone's attention. Decked in gleaming armor, the protective covering that surrounded the man was nearly all matte black except for a series of straight vertical red and white stripes that ran down the right arm from the shoulder. A little etching upon the breastplate was the only other splash of color, one that read "N7" in bold, blocky letters. His head, freshly shaved, was slightly marked from the bristles of gray stubble that threatened to rise up from the skin. The man's beard looked to have been heavily trimmed as well, with only a neatly clipped goatee remaining from the previously impenetrable thicket.

The Commander had arrived, at last.

No one spoke for what felt like the longest time. Even Garrus, who had been with Shepard for the past few days, felt like he had sunk into a heavy feeling of déjà vu—his friend looked like he was back in his prime again. Amazing how a change of clothing (the armor had been provided courtesy of Garrus—retrieved from his apartment after Shepard had entrusted it to him years ago for safekeeping) and a deliberate shave could extensively modify the air he carried about him.

Trailing behind him, drawing looks of her own, was Roahn. Like everyone else, she too was sparing several glances at her father, no doubt finding it eerie that the man from the clips on the extranet had apparently come to life right before her. She was also thrown as she looked around the room only to find a sea of familiar faces in close proximity. Roahn, however, had built up a sturdy mental fortitude to not be so visibly taken aback knowing that more of her heroes were practically surrounding her. It was still a wonderful marvel to her to see such storied individuals like Grunt, Miranda Lawson, and everyone else, but she kept her composure, graceful and poised as she stood next to her father as echoed her mother's spirit.

Shepard grinned shyly, brushing his jaw at the same time as it must have felt odd to him to have less hair on his face after so many years of not bothering to shave it off. "We're not at a funeral, guys. You can speak."

The vibrant energy that had been present just seconds previously returned all at once. Excited exclamations punctuated the air as all the new arrivals immediately all began to swarm Shepard, faces bright, ecstatic in the presence of their friend.

"Hmm, you actually look _refined_ , Shepard," Jack teased as she flicked at Shepard's goatee.

"And you look less like an Omegan dancer now that you've got some clothes on," Shepard dryly retorted, which drew a laugh out of Jack, whose taste in clothing had been quite atrocious when Shepard had first met her.

"Shepard," Grunt pushed himself to the front. "Glad you're not dead."

"I'm keeping ahead of that so far."

"That's good," Miranda chimed in. "I'd be disappointed if my hard work's longevity was doomed to be pitifully short."

"Seeing as how things turned out, I'd say I made the most of things," Shepard said as he shook Miranda's hand.

Kaidan then edged around Grunt's wide frame to meet up with his old commander. "You're still damnably modest. Not to mention keeping busy by kicking a lot of hornet's nests. Business as usual, eh?"

"You could say that. Business as usual."

"That's Loco for you," Vega said, using Shepard's old nickname as he flashed a toothy grin. "He can't go for long without getting the urge to blow something up."

"Thankfully we're not doing anything of the sort," Shepard gently corrected. "But the urge does manifest itself from time to time."

Vega barked out a series of laughs and Shepard gracefully looked to the ceiling.

Javik, being Javik, simply strode forward and held out a limber, three-fingered hand for Shepard to shake in greeting. The Prothean was not one to mince words and Shepard knew that Javik would not generally speak unless he had a good reason to. Shepard had learned that Protheans, or at least in Javik's case, tended to be quite reserved with their feelings to the point where they almost seemed to be completely withdrawn. He knew that Javik actually had a lot of things going on under the surface but it generally took quite an effort to peel away the layers of mental defenses that the Prothean had constructed for himself.

The Prothean then glanced down at Roahn, who stared saucers back at him, before returning to look at Shepard. "I had heard that you had spawned. Congratulations."

Shepard's mouth pursed into a straight line and he rubbed the back of his shaved head sheepishly. "Yeah, well… Tali and I didn't do it the traditional way…"

What Shepard meant was that, because humans and quarians could not copulate, there had been no conceivable way for Shepard to pass on his genes when he and Tali had begun seriously discussing the prospect of having children. Javik, fully cognizant of this fact, remained unperturbed in the face of being corrected.

"Oh. Then I retract my congratulations."

Shepard pulled a face while Roahn suddenly found herself surrounded by a swath of faces both unfamiliar and intimate at the same time. Each one of the faces were clamoring to get a good look at her, pushing her further and further away from her father.

Roahn felt dizzy to the point of being intoxicated as she became inundated with handshakes and affectionate pats to the head as multiple compliments floated around about her. Kasumi was particularly guilty of this excess affection, as the woman was quietly squealing as she nearly shook Roahn's arm off, treating her as if she had found a stray cat on the side of the road and was begging to keep it.

Oddly enough, Jack came to the rescue as she hoisted Kasumi up and over everyone with a carefully placed biotic field. Kasumi yelped and flailed with all limbs as the void lifted her up several feet into the air, placing the woman outside the boundary of the crowd. Garrus caught his wife with a guilty grin while Jack, after disengaging the field, knelt down to Roahn's level.

"Anyone messes with you, let me know. Your mother had my back for a while. She'd murder me if I didn't return the favor. So give me a heads up if you need someone's leg to get suddenly and painfully broken, okay?"

"Ye-Yeah," Roahn nodded breathlessly, not noticing that her father was mouthing a stern yet exasperated " _No_ " to the thin woman behind her, which caused Jack to smirk.

"Deal, then," Jack held up a heavily tattooed fist, presumably for Roahn to knock against. " _Death_ " was spelled out in all capital letters on the woman's knuckles.

Rather hesitatingly, having never done this sort of a casual custom before, Roahn raised her own fist and lightly tapped it against Jack's. It felt like she had just knocked upon a steel beam. There was not much in the way of hard muscle to Jack's frame, but her discernable strength was something else.

Garrus, watching the whole thing play out, nudged Shepard in the ribs after he had set his own wife down. "Told you she'd be a hit."

"I never thought she wouldn't. She's a Shepard." The commander then scanned the room as everyone was now being a little more thoughtful with their approach to conversing with Roahn, now that Jack had appointed herself as the girl's guardian, before looking back over at Garrus. "When you said that you'd be getting a team down here, I didn't think you would be _this_ successful. Seven people? I thought that the whole reason why we didn't try to rope anyone else into our group beforehand was because of the logistical problems Chimera would impose on us. How'd you get everyone down to Earth without any problems?"

"Well, Kaidan and James were already on Earth to begin with, where Chimera does not bother with monitoring intra-planetary travel," Garrus explained. "And they're Alliance, so they know how to slip through any Chimera nets undetected. Same with Jack and Miranda—both are employed by the Alliance and Miranda's pretty nifty in finding ways to temporarily disguise one's virtual identity—she most likely helped Jack out with that. Kasumi, well… Kasumi can get everywhere, as you know. She's always has the best luck with that sort of thing. Grunt, I'm hedging my bet that Miranda helped smuggle him down here—he was apparently close by, on the Citadel already. Probably trying to gain some support there for Clan Urdnot after Wrex's death. And I actually didn't invite Javik. Someone else must've."

" _I_ did," Liara said as she glided over towards the two. "I was going through the pitch of how to properly explain what we were doing to Javik, but all he asked was, ' _Does the commander require my assistance?_ ' When I said yes, he ended the call, but not before saying, ' _You can expect my arrival_.'"

"Brevity certainly is a virtue," Shepard murmured.

None of them commented on the few missing members that had not deigned to join this little escapade from circumstances either in or out of their control. Samara, a formidable asari justicar, had perished a few years back on a lonely moon when she was visiting her daughter in an Ardat-Yakshi temple. A member of a Thessian terrorist cell had bombed the temple while Samara had been inside, killing both her and the remainder of the Ardat-Yakshi. Officially, the asari Republic had denounced the action, calling it an act of terror, but it was rumored that there were individuals in the government that praised the actions of eradicating the embarrassments that were the Ardat-Yakshi, even if it did mean that a justicar had died in the action.

Zaeed Massani, a notorious mercenary yet a valued ally, had died in his sleep shortly after the war had ended. He had developed a heart condition that medical science, even in this day and age, had not been able to effectively combat. It was a poignant end for a man who had predicted on several occasions that he would meet his end from a bullet to the head, most likely in a dive bar of some sorts. He managed to avoid that fate and had lived a relatively peaceful and comfortable life in the mansion he had purchased in the Azores. Most likely, had Zaeed known all along the exact manner in how he would really die, some small part of him would actually be disappointed at how ignominious it turned out to be. Fortunately for his memory, he had passed away rather peacefully.

Jacob Taylor, despite being absent from the group, was still alive and well. However, he had completely put aside his soldiering ways and had thrown himself completely into being a farmer and a family man. Jacob had helped kickstart a new colony on some far-away world, growing fields of grain and oats. He had married an ex-Cerberus scientist by the name of Brynn and had three children, two of them teenagers at this point. From the smattering of messages that he sent his colleagues to keep everyone up to date on his status, he was quite happy and content with his life at the moment. Considering the considerable effort it would take for Jacob to travel to Earth coupled with the fact that Garrus did not think it appropriate to uproot the man from such comfort, he had decided to leave him be.

"All right. Gather 'round, everyone," Shepard called as he waved an arm to gesture everyone to mill around the island in the middle of the kitchen. Sam and Nya courteously hung back, knowing that they did not have much of a dog in this fight. Roahn stepped up to her father's side, her hands groping at the edge of the counter as she rose up on her tiptoes in an effort to get her chin up above the stone ledge, wanting to steal tender glances at everyone in close proximity and memorize every implicit detail of their appearance.

As everyone settled in, Shepard took a moment to look at each person in the eye, ascertaining if he had their full attention.

"Now," Shepard began, "I'm not sure exactly how much detail Garrus has mentioned about what it is I have in mind for all of you—"

"Oh, he told us pretty much everything," Kaidan chimed in.

"Did he? That's good. I guess I won't need to repeat the events of the past couple weeks for what feels like the five hundredth time now."

"Actually," Jack twirled her hand in the air, an impish smile on her face, "I missed the memo. Wasn't paying any attention. You mind going over everything since the beginning?"

Shepard's face slackened before he finally frowned. "Too late. I'm moving on."

"What happened to your sense of humor, Shepard? I can't mess with you anymore, is that it?"

"Probably not the best time for that, Jack."

"Heh. Shit, you're still the same hardass."

"Hey!" Vega inhaled sharply as he nudged Jack hard in the ribs before indicating Roahn. "Watch the language! There are children present!"

Roahn glanced back and forth, somewhat timid at having all the attention focused on her now. "I've probably heard it all, anyway," she assured. Shepard rubbed his eyes tenderly as he mouthed some choice words behind his palm.

" _Moving on_ ," Shepard emphasized, snapping his fingers to regain control over the room. "You all know the situation—what's at stake. I'm not going to reiterate our entire history and how we got to this point right now, nor am I going to give a fancy speech as my days for that sort of thing are long behind me. That's not what matters. What does matter is that my daughter and I," he placed a palm upon Roahn's shoulder, nudging her against his hip, "need your help. Desperately."

"Whatever it is," Kaidan nodded in acknowledgement, "we're with you, Shepard."

"Damn straight," Vega said before paling upon realizing that he had broken the rule he had literally just set for everyone else ten seconds ago. He whirled to Roahn and pulled an apologetic face. "Sorry, Roahn!"

"Again," Roahn tried very hard to put on an airy disposition, "I've heard worse."

Grunt let out a low series of rumbles as he leaned over the island to gravitate attention in his direction. Upon the back of the krogan hung a sturdy war hammer—one that still had a fair amount of dried blood encrusted about the sharpened edges. "Just let us know what we have to do—who we have to kill, Shepard."

"Just to make this clear," Shepard raised his hands for everyone's benefit, "killing people is not the goal here." Grunt looked particularly disappointed at that, but Shepard had little time to regard the krogan's bloodlust. "What we have to do is ensure that Roahn and I will no longer be harassed and that no more people we care about get hurt. To do that, we need to strike at the head of the beast that is Chimera: Alliance Senator Raynor Larsen. The objective is to stop him for good… but like I already said, we're not trying to kill him. We have the information to discredit him and get him removed from public office. The tricky part is _getting_ to him… which is where you all come in."

Shepard then gazed at the kitchen island, a little unsure of how to proceed. "Hey, Sam?"

"Yeah, what's up?" the doctor asked as he scooted between Liara and Javik, nervously eying the heroes flanking him.

"Does this kitchen have a hologram function at all? Can it overlay a map?"

"Yeah, just reach up and make a pinching motion. Then, throw it down on the island, you should get a console window there."

Shepard did as he was told and soon a monochrome map became superimposed across the flat surface of the counter. Everyone scooted a bit closer, intrigued and wanting to apprehend the map.

"Before I go on," Shepard said, "I'm assuming that you all realize that what we're planning to do is by no means legal. Now, if any of you have any aversions towards breaking the law—"

Whatever conditions Shepard was planning on appending trailed off as a smattering of chuckles from around the group burst forth en masse. Shepard tentatively laughed himself, but mostly in relief as he realized that none of his friends had raised objections to this.

"Okay, dumb thing to say, I know," Shepard conceded. "Figured I had to check, though."

"Come on, Shep," Kasumi tilted her head mischievously. "When have you _ever_ known us to be upstanding moral citizens?"

"Emphasis on ' _upstanding_ ,'" Miranda added, taking a sideways glance at Jack for good measure.

"Bite me, cheerleader," Jack snarled.

" _Quiet_ ," Shepard raised his voice. "We've got a game plan to go over."

Grunt rumbled his agreement. "Good. Getting bored, anyway."

Shepard indicated the krogan with a knowing look. "You see? Grunt agrees with me. We're losing focus either way. I mean… here, take a look." He then leaned forward and began manipulating the large holographic map until it projected a major city in every excruciating detail possible. "Berlin, Germany. Heart of the Systems Alliance—but you don't need me to tell you that. Raynor Larsen, our target, spends his working hours in this city. Our job is to get me in a room with Larsen, in front of witnesses, where I will be able to submit my personal claims on the events that Larsen has been hounding me for while evidence of his association with Chimera is simultaneously dispersed to the extranet—that will ensure a high degree of veracity of the evidence's contents if I am physically present to back up the contents of what I have to provide, which are recordings of Larsen's illegal affiliation with the PMC Chimera. Normally, the senators spend their time in a building in the middle of the city, right here." Shepard indicated a spot on the map that was placed in the heart of what was a heavily congested downtown area. "But for the rest of the week, the next three days, all of the Alliance senators will be debating the ratification of a new bill here, in a building called the Reichstag."

The map swiveled and zoomed in to showcase a rather formidable looking structure. The Reichstag was clearly a building that had been built a couple of centuries ago, given the obvious architectural parallels. Strong stone pillars, a tall set of stairs leading up to the front door, a heavily fortified glass dome. It certainly had all the hallmarks of a government building, that was for sure. In Roahn's eyes, the building itself seemed like the perfect sort of place for her and her father to finally stamp out this damnable infection that had been clamoring for them all this time. At long last, an end was finally in sight.

Other things to consider that several of the people huddled around the map were starting to notice was that the Reichstag was located on the edge of a massive park instead of being centrally placed at some random intersection in the middle of a bustling city. A park meant wide open areas to traverse—less chance of being boxed in. A formidable advantage for any invader, should they ever get that far.

Liara then opened up an additional extranet tab, calling everyone's attention above the map, where a new box had popped into existence. "I found the legal precedent that you were looking for, Shepard. The secret weapon that can ensure Larsen's downfall. Here: the Weaver Act. Enacted in 2153 based on previous UNAS amendments in the 21st century, the Weaver Act is a specific yet obscure part of the Alliance charter that states that any bill presented before an Alliance congress or senate must not be tied to any conflicts of interest of any senator or congressman voting on it. If a conflict of interest is discovered, any such bill would have to be discarded and the vote would be voided."

"Great work, Liara. Then this is the point I was trying to make, people—with the Weaver Act we have a legal card to play that can cut through the bureaucracy and ensure that Larsen is removed from both the senate and from Chimera itself. But to disseminate this information, we need to reach the Reichstag first."

"Only problem is," Shepard continued, "that we can't just park a ship on the front lawn and walk in the front door. The Alliance generally doesn't like unauthorized spacecraft landing in restricted areas, even ones with me in them. They would blow us out of the sky before we could ever hope of catching a _glimpse_ of Larsen. Thus, we have to play things a little less brashly."

Grasping the edge of the map, Shepard pushed the chart's field of view south by a couple of miles. He tapped on another wide open area, and a little text box containing the information of the address floated upwards in response to the input.

"Tempelhofer Field. A multi-level starport. Ten whole stories of landing pads of various shapes and sizes. It's also used as a park on the bottom level. Point is, it's the closest place for us to legally land in the city without drawing attention. It's also good for us because Chimera also maintains a small garrison there."

"I'm sorry," Miranda interjected. "How is Chimera being there _good_ for us? Isn't the whole point trying to get to the Reichstag while attempting to remain clear of them?"

"Well, assuming that Chimera has the barest common sense of how to properly stock their garrisons, I'm rather confident that they will have a small motor pool on location. All we need to do is, once we land at Tempelhofer Field, knock out the contingent at the starport (which should be simple for us), commandeer a couple vehicles, and utilize the surface roads to get over to the Reichstag, where Larsen will be."

Kaidan rubbed at his chin as he appraised the plan laid before him. "Sounds like a lot of things have the potential to go wrong."

"I never said that this was going to be easy. Chimera is bound to send everything they have after us once we hit the ground. Enough to knock the rust from us, at least."

"Also," James said, "we need a ship. Unless you're thinking of us all taking public transportation over to Germany…"

"Luckily for you," Shepard nodded, "we _have_ a ship. Sam?"

Once again the bearded human at the fringe of the group bobbed his head upward, half a pizza slice in his mouth. His eyes momentarily bugged from his head as he apparently had not been expected to be singled out quite so soon. Yes, this was definitely unexpected for him.

"Hmm… whaaa-?" The poor man was obviously confused.

"Did I forget to mention? We're going to need you to pilot us to Berlin. We don't really have any other choice as you can smuggle us into Germany without drawing any attention."

Truthfully, Sam did take a slight bit of umbrage at being volun-told for what was sounding more and more like an incredibly dangerous operation. His share of being in the crosshairs of trained killers and mercenaries had come to an end, or so he had thought. However, Sam, like many people before him, found it incredibly hard to deny Commander Shepard a favor, and he swallowed his bite of pizza and took a guilty look at Nya before responding.

"Well, I would've liked to have known of this development beforehand."

Abashed, Shepard dipped his head. "I'm sorry for the surprise, Sam, but we really could use you. Things would be a whole lot more difficult for us otherwise."

Sam glanced over at his wife again, trying to seem apologetic for how spontaneous their lives had become in the past 24 hours. The human clenched his teeth, trying to come up with a plausible explanation for why he had come to his next decision before ultimately deciding against it with a shrug.

"Ah, what the hell," the man muttered after taking a quick swig of beer for courage. "I guess I'm up for one last bout of heroics. Besides, it's been a while since I was in Germany. I might just get a chance to try their wurst again." Sensing an opportunity, Sam gestured over to the quarian at his side while attempting to remain genial. "What about you, Nya? Want to make a vacation out of it?"

Nya's eyes narrowed momentarily before she looked up at the ceiling, deep in thought. Like her husband, she was also feeling a little trepidation at being recruited for such a dangerous job so suddenly, but since the two of them would not be engaging in any of the ground operations, she quickly calmed as she realized that they would most likely be in little danger the entire time they were in Berlin. In any case, it had been a while since she had been on a vacation with her husband. It would certainly be an opportunity to have a fair amount of time alone with her husband, locked away in a hotel room.

The more she thought about the prospect, the more it seemed to be in her favor.

"Sure," Nya shrugged casually after a bit. "Taylor can handle being on her own for a few days."

Shepard pummeled the counter with a fist triumphantly. "If no one has any more questions, there's not much time to lose. We publicly connect Larsen to Chimera and the whole game is up for him. I'm not about to let Larsen sabotage humanity and in turn, the galaxy, just so that he can consolidate more power for himself. Besides, I just want to finally settle down. He's the only obstacle in my way." He paused to give way for his inclination to look down at his daughter, whereupon he lightly placed a hand upon the back of her helmeted head.

Smiling to the group, Shepard brought his daughter in closer to him. "There are more important things in my life that I need to focus on."

* * *

Half an hour later, the whole house had been emptied of people to the point where it now seemed more cavernous than ever now that it was not host to an assortment of beings in all shapes and sizes. Everyone was waiting outside in rented vehicles, having loaded up in preparation to go back to the starport so that they could make the short hop over to Berlin.

Sam lifted his coat from the rack while Nya next to him grabbed a few essentials. The two had packed a couple bags as they had intended to stay in Berlin for a few days longer than Shepard, wanting to take advantage of the tourist traps in the city as well as embark on a tour of the local cuisine while in Germany. Taylor had filtered out of her room by now, as she had been playing video games for the past couple hours and had thus missed out on most of the excitement. She, of course, was a little quizzical to learn that she would be home alone for quite a bit, but elation quickly overcame her confusion with the promise of such freedom.

"Now," Sam addressed his daughter as he prepared to leave, surreptitiously glancing at the pistol he had placed within the holster under his jacket before zipping it up, "your mother and I will be in Europe for a few days. I'm expecting you to take good care of the place while we're gone."

"Don't worry," Taylor assured, face gleaming behind her golden visor, but Sam wasn't finished.

"No parties, understand? I don't want a bunch of kids your age running wild around this house without adult supervision."

"But… but dad—"

" _No parties_ , Taylor. If I find out that you held one in this house, I will have to ground you for the rest of your life."

"I just… I haven't seen any of my friends—"

"No."

"What if I had only a couple friends over?" Taylor tried to bargain.

"No," Sam repeated stiffly.

"One friend?"

"No."

"Please?"

" _No!_ "

The quarian girl stomped her feet in a huff before turning upon a heel to march further into the house. " _Fine_ ," she grumbled. "I'll just ask mom."

* * *

At the same time, Shepard and Roahn were among the last to board the final vehicle—Nya's truck—when Shepard suddenly stepped in front of Roahn and knelt down, armor glistening in the shrouded sunlight. The girl was nearly loath to look at him, for seeing her father embrace the role of being the commander was nearly too much for her to bear. The reality of the situation was overbearing, he emitted this sort of invisible radiance that served to exemplify his image.

"When we get to Berlin," Shepard told her, "You're going to have to stay with me. You must realize that the safest you'll ever be is within my sight."

"If you don't make it…" Roahn started, but her father shushed her.

"This won't be like the last time. I'm fine now—I won't be distracted. Besides, we're with the best team that I've had the pleasure to serve with. With everything on the line, you can be damn sure that I'll do everything to protect you."

 _Once more unto the breach_ , the thought unconsciously popped into Shepard's head _. I guess I'm truly unable to run from my past, eh, Tali?_

Lifting a hand up, parting aside the humid air the taiga exuded, Roahn lightly touched her father's armored forearm. Her fingers pressed against the rigid covering of the N7 armor—the material of her enviro-suit enabled a high friction between it and the armor, making her touch extraordinarily grippy.

"You _will_ win, won't you?" she whispered.

Shepard's hands closed around Roahn's smaller palm, gently encasing it in a gleaming lock. "I won't lose. I promise, I will come back to you. No matter what it takes."

 _For our daughter, Tali. I will do anything._

 _Truly… no matter what it takes._

* * *

 **A/N: Based on my outline, the next chapter is going to be a massive one. If it gets too massive, I might just end up splitting it for readability reasons. Alas, that decision won't be obvious to me until I actually get to writing it. Also, I'd prefer to get a chapter released before the holidays at any rate. This thing is so close to being done. Gah, hard to believe we're almost at the end. It's been quite a rush and I hope you've enjoyed reading it as much as I've enjoyed writing it.**

 **Playlist:**

 **Shepards in the Forest: "Sextant" by Justin Hurwitz from the film _First Man_**

 **Onwards to Berlin: "Disembark" by Ludvig Forssell from the video game _Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain_**


	21. Chapter 21: Reichstag Pt I

_Excerpt from an Allied Adventures commercial from 2195_

" _Now, for the first time, the next generation of Normandy Heroes action figures are available in stores today! Choose from figures like Tali'Zorah, with her new holo-drone sidekick, Chatika vas Paus! You can get Tali in three different suit arrangements: Pilgrim, Nomad, and Armored Assault! Each figurine comes with different weapons, from the Reegar Carbine to the Eviscerator Shotgun! Mow down Tali's enemies with superior firepower and you too can reclaim Rannoch from the evil forces of the Reapers!"_

" _Each Tali figure also comes with a removable visor (likeness in no way representative of Tali'Zorah's actual appearance). Tali does not stop until her foes lie dead at her feet, but that does not mean that she is a workaholic! Tali takes her downtime seriously either by tinkering on the most awesome engine tech in the galaxy or at night, when she retires to her captain's cabin for a little… private time. Soon, kids, you too will be able to see why Commander Shepard went for a badass quarian like Tali'Zorah! Buy your next figurine today!"_

 _NOTE: the above commercial ended up being rejected by the Alliance Advertising Association for being too "risqué" with its content. Allied Adventures ended up submitting another commercial after removing the sexual references and added more blood and gore in the cartoon sequences to make up for the time gap. The revised commercial was then unanimously approved by the ratings board._

* * *

 _Berlin, Germany  
_ _European Union_

For the tenth day in a row, it was snowing.

Private Manuel Ramos—assigned to Chimera's Tempelhofer outpost—grunted as he morosely stared upwards at the flat gray sky, which was completely overcast with milky cumulus clouds that had all merged together to create a singular monotonous blanket that draped over the city. Snow lightly fluttered down from above, gently dusting the deck of Tempelhofer's upper level. Holo-drones had been out all morning, using their static cleaners to zap away the larger piles of snow that had accumulated since last night, but the weather was constantly undoing all of the work that the drones had been diligently performing, despite their best efforts.

There was just too much damn snow.

Ramos shifted uncomfortably within his armor, his limbs having been numbed from the cold for hours. While Chimera had been "kind" enough to provide him and his patrol-mate—a fellow by the name of Ayers—with suits that had built-in heaters, both men had been annoyed to find out that the heaters in their armor were faulty and notoriously unreliable when working in the cold as the low temperatures frequently wreaked havoc with the equipment. Ironic, considering that the heat packs were designed to dispel the cold in the first place. Tempelhofer's outpost did not accommodate a section for any of Chimera's engineer corps to give the suits a fix either, so both men simply had to suck it up and do their daily patrols while their limbs succumbed to frostbite.

That was the annoying bit. Tempelhofer was in the same freaking city as Chimera's headquarters yet the penny-pinchers in that cozy (and heated) building were too miserly to divert a few engineers a few miles south. Ramos had trouble understanding where all the sense in Chimera's leadership had fled to with this supposedly bone-headed decision.

Tempelhofer, the closest starport to central Berlin, was a new posting for both Ramos and Ayers, one that neither of them had particularly relished receiving. Ramos had previously been assigned an outing on Luna, making a habit of getting himself blind drunk on the local grain liquor every day out of sheer boredom, while Ayers had been a veteran of several raids of immigrant camps on the moons of Titan and Io. Neither of them had requested to be transferred to Earth and of course neither of them had designs on guarding a place as innocuous as Tempelhofer on their minds. Upon their first meeting, both men had swapped very few stories of themselves after getting assigned to Berlin, mostly because Chimera dictated that their patrols were to be carried out with utmost vigilance, which was corporate-speak for no talking.

Also, the cold here was doing a hell of a job in tampering down any desire to speak anyway. The body's energy must be conserved however possible and talking would simply drain those precious reserves.

Any other time of the year and Ramos would have probably liked Berlin, but it being so goddamn cold did do a number on his enthusiasm for the city. He was originally from _Texas_ , for god's sake. How did Chimera think he was going to take a posting up here in Germany? Certainly not well, he knew that much. He then flexed his fingers after shifting his rifle fully to his left hand, praying for the blood to slip through his shrunken capillaries so that he could circulate more warmth to his poor extremities. His body was numb enough as it was.

Ramos' boot hit a tiny patch of ice as he walked, a place where the holo-drones had missed in their cleanup, and momentarily stumbled from the loss of traction before righting himself. "Fuck," he seethed, mostly to himself.

 _Fuck this cold_ , was what he meant.

Ayers turned around, cradling his own weapon, after hearing his cohort's outburst. Like Ramos, he was armored from head to toe in Chimera's black and red colors, not that it was doing him any good either with regards to the elements.

"Second time that's happened today," he noted out loud.

Ramos just grumbled a bit before returning to walk alongside Ayers. "Fucking drones. Can't even clear the deck properly. We're just freezing our damn nuts off, standing out here. How much longer do we have to stand out here in this misery?"

"I'm going to assume that was a rhetorical question," Ayers drawled. Their eight-hour patrol had only just begun forty-five minutes ago.

" _Join Chimera, see the galaxy_ ," Ramos said mockingly as he gestured to the monochrome sky, moving on to a different subject. "It's all horseshit. I signed up to get away from all the boredom and yet here I am. I swear, I'm mustering out of this outfit first chance I get. Fuck Berlin. Fuck this weather. Fuck Chimera. I actually _believed_ the recruitment ads, you know. You remember the ads that showed the soldier carrying the flag from planet to planet? The ones where the bloodstained warrior is shown killing illegals and getting swarmed by ladies during R&R? Heh, I sure was fooled."

Ayers indeed remembered the ads that Ramos was referring to, being easily able to recall the commercial's usage of scantily clad women suggestively throwing themselves upon a man whose armor was still dripping gore, thereby getting covered in blood themselves, but his response to Ramos was a little more muted.

"Chimera got me when they mentioned the pay. 4,000 credits a month. I needed the income."

"Oh yeah, I'm not saying the pay's bad or anything. I'm just a little… disappointed at how our locale is not at all… scenic."

Ramos swept a hand out to emphasize the view, or lack thereof. Tempelhofer Field was a meticulously constructed complex, boasting more than a hundred docking gates that, all in all, covered more than a square mile smack dab in the middle of lower Berlin. The way Tempelhofer had been built was by arranging several levels of gates on top of one another, making the starport look something like a flower in bloom. On a clear day one could have an impressive view of the entire expanse of Berlin on the uppermost level, which is where Ramos and Ayers currently were, but the clouds and the snow today were preventing such a view from being taken advantage of, merely adding to the two's gloom.

Before Ayers could chime in about the benefits that Chimera had been able to provide the two, both of their comms squealed as the harsh whine of feedback burst through on full blast.

"… _-econ-… -atrol…"_ their supervisor was attempting to speak, but the static that enveloped his words made it impossible for either Ramos or Ayers to understand.

" _Arrgh!_ " Ramos clutched at his head, the volume in his headset apparently set too high. "I can't understand a goddamn thing he's saying!"

"Just shut up for a minute—I can't understand anything either!" Ayres shot back, also wincing as the noise assaulted his eardrums.

"… _-e on guard. New kill… -rder has been… -thorized by Operative One. Comman-… -ohn Shepard… to be… -illed on sight."_

"Something about a kill order," Ayres screwed up his face as he struggled to interpret the message. "Operative One's given authorization to kill Commander Shepard, I think."

The men shared a look. Obviously they had not joined Chimera for the supposed draw of attacking war heroes, let alone the greatest warrior the galaxy had ever seen. Both of them did not need to share out loud their misgivings that the garbled order had represented. Something was amiss, here.

There was no way of putting it that Ayres and Ramos had missed the time where they could have demonstrated their greatest potential. Too young to have been drafted for service against the Reapers, denied the chance to prove their worth to their race, both men had signed up with Chimera because they had been promised that they would receive the chance to become men through combat—a perk that the Alliance certainly could not in good conscience pledge for obvious reasons. They had been frustrated with their government's repeated kowtowing to alien nationals, but striking back at figures like Shepard was not something that had been in Chimera's recruitment ads. They had wanted thrills, an adventure, the chance to immerse themselves into the adrenaline of combat. Killing Shepard was… pure insanity. Not at all the sort of deed they wanted to be remembered by.

And… Operative One. The individual who ostensibly had given the kill order. The hell was _that_ about? Not much was known about Operative One from the main rank and file within Chimera, but there were whispers that the man in question was gargantuan in nature—a cyborg. Names like the "Legionnaire" had even been thrown about in tandem with the Operative One moniker, which were usual grumblings from the grunts not on a need-to-know basis. Either way, with all this secrecy involved, something was most likely going down right about now.

There was little time for either man to discuss this new development because their supervisor apparently had more to say. " _Be… -n guard. La-… -ad numb-… -iled flight pl-… Interc-… -nd det-… new arrival… minutes ago."_

Ramos slapped his mic, located upon the side of his helmet, in frustration. " _New arrival?_ I didn't get anything else out of that. Christ, who's running this show? Every single piece of tech we have is crap! Or at least, if it works, the cold turns it to shit!"

"I think he was saying something about a 'landing pad,' and a 'new arrival,'" Ayers tried. "Beyond that, I didn't get that much else."

"Landing pad," Ramos scoffed in derision. " _Landing pad_. Which fucking landing pad? There's 120 pads in this stupid starport!"

Ayres too shared his colleague's exasperation. Between the two of them, they had run into no less than three dozen easily fixable issues since being deployed to Berlin not even a month ago. Their supervisor was a slob, they had no techs on hand to fix the equipment that constantly broke, and to top everything off, there had been this snowstorm raging for more than a week which consistently obscured all visibility to within ten feet, making it impossible to see or even hear a new arrival landing at Tempelhofer.

Further compounding the issues they were facing was that Ramos and Ayres had discovered that the initial Chimera techs that had set up the Tempelhofer outpost had not done their due diligence in creating a solid net of comm traffic in the area. The only localized transmitter for Chimera communications was down at the main outpost building, on the ground level next to the motor pool. The range of the transmissions emitted from that area were notorious for being very distorted and rather range-inefficient. If someone was on patrol on Tempelhofer's top level, then the requisite radio wave would have to beam up from the ground level, go up a thousand meters into the air, somehow punch its way through ten layers of highly refined steel floors on the way, and hope that atmospheric conditions were not worsening the equipment necessary to receive the transmission in the first place. Patrolling the top level was almost always a nightmare even on a clear day—calls were usually obscured and incomprehensible, not to mention that the current garrison only assigned two people on guard for multiple levels. Obviously, guarding Tempelhofer was a fruitless effort to push against the inevitability of a faulty system. A weakness would be exploited, sooner or later.

The only recourse at this point was to take the lift over to the main building and bluntly ask for an update in person since the mics were malfunctioning. It was an unrefined solution and it would perhaps be reflected poorly upon whoever was blunt enough to waste time potentially spent patrolling in order to follow up on a broken transmission. Then again, if enough of these complaints piled up as time went by, perhaps Chimera would finally get off its ass and lend some much-needed aid.

Without specifics, the two men were not even going to attempt searching 120 landing pads based off the jumbled message they had received. They had enough plausible deniability to simply slack off and disregard their orders. But there had been this intangible tension in the air for the entire morning so far that seemed to hint that maybe just today protocol should be followed.

Ramos and Ayres entered into a brief game of rock-paper-scissors for the dubious distinction to go ask their supervisor for clarification. Ayres lost and was subsequently denied a chance to go for two out of three rounds.

"Whatever," Ayres finally shrugged as he prepared to make his way to the lift. At least the heaters in the elevators were still working—perhaps this was not as bad of a prospect as he initially thought. The thought of having a chance to thaw his frozen limbs seemed like a good enough reward to counter the awkwardness of speaking to his super. "If they don't like the push-back, maybe they should invest in better infrastructure."

"Let me know what the supe's response was," Ramos said, no doubt smirking under his helmet, relishing the prospect that _he_ would not be the one getting chewed out for daring to question their orders (despite the fact that they could not understand them in the first place).

Their supervisor, Griggs, was a fat, lazy pig of a man. Lethargic and always in a foul mood, Griggs took delight in every opportunity to yell at his subordinates for every fuck-up, no matter how minor. It was most likely his way of living out a power trip as there was probably no place else that he would be able to command authority, much less respect.

Ayres gave a dry laugh. "You want to bet ten credits that he's going to be kind and magnanimous this time around?"

"Change that wager to being foul and irate instead, and you have yourself a bet."

Silently bemoaning his fate, Ayres shook his head. "I hate this fucking job," were his final words before his ears picked up a slight zipping sound, and then something _slammed_ into the side of his head, causing him to feel nothing else.

The aloft snowflakes lazily swirled in the midst of a sudden squall.

Ramos had turned away in the split second that had lingered between Ayres' last words and the bullet that had ended his life, and in doing so had missed watching his cohort's head completely fly apart. His surprise was paralytic once he finally turned back around to find Ayres lying prostrate upon the deck, a pool of blood surrounded by chunks of helmet and brain slowly expanding across the frosty metal. Snowflakes resting upon the frozen floor melted once the blood touched them, gently beading them into the ever-growing dark mirror that dully reflected the creamy sky flurrying above.

The Chimera mercenary simply blinked, dumbstruck, as he nearly became convinced that the sight of Ayres' dead body was a hallucination. It had happened so _quick_ that it was almost unfathomable to imagine that this was, in fact, reality.

"Um…" was all Ramos could utter, because he was not nearly quick witted enough to think of a coherent sentence at a time like this. His fingers, frozen stiff from the cold, creaked as he desperately tried to get a firmer grip upon his rifle, but all that effort would prove to be for naught when another bullet, the sound muffled by the wind once more, shot across the deck and hit Ramos in the leg.

There was the distinct sensation of his knee blowing out—bones cracked and muscles shredded —and Ramos bellowed in pain as he too fell to the floor, his rifle skidding across the deck, well out of reach. The man groped at his leg, his gloves rapidly becoming slippery with his blood, as he too colored the ground with the precious fluids leaking out of him. The area around his armored knee was colored dark red—same as Ayres. He could feel the blood pumping out of the artery that had just been severed in thick spurts. His wounded leg began to grow even colder, if it was at all possible. Ramos' mind swam fruitlessly as he tried to comprehend exactly _what the hell_ had just happened.

He had been shot, obviously. There had been no gun report—at least none that he had been able to discern. His knee was hurting like a son of a bitch, expected given the exit wound was smack-dab upon his kneecap. Bits of his leg nestled in tiny lakes of blood upon the deck and splinters of bone melted chasms in the thin layer of snow. Ramos continued to roar, his fists beating uselessly on the ground in rage and in impotence.

Hidden assailant somewhere on this platform, Ramos was able to figure. No way that he could have been shot from a neighboring building. Not in this weather. If it was not for the snowstorm, he would have been able to see exactly where the attack had originated from.

But as of right now, he was relegated to roll upon the floor in pain some more, his leg becoming a block of ice and less responsive as time went on.

Gray now crept into Ramos' vision and he was not sure whether it was the blood loss or the freezing cold that was the culprit, but either way a dark shape was now becoming more and more defined as it made its way through the snowy mist. The shadow turned humanoid and with every foot it grew closer to Ramos, the more details the downed merc could make out.

Intricate and form fitting armor. Grimace on their face. A long rifle clutched between their hands. "N7" printed upon the breastplate.

Immediately, it all clicked for Ramos.

"Well…" Ramos gritted as he turned on his side, trying to obscure his hand as it slowly crept to the sidearm still holstered upon his hip while his eyes remained fixated upon the approaching man. "I wasn't going to believe it unless I saw it. And… now you're here."

The man didn't give Ramos the courtesy of responding back. _As expected_ , Ramos figured as he mustered a fatigued laugh.

"You look good," Ramos kept talking. "Well… better than I would have figured. Or something like that. Don't worry, I know this isn't personal for you, but I have to ask… are you really back this time?"

"Back?" Shepard asked as he approached to within a yard of Ramos' fallen body. The bearded man chewed his lip as he pondered the question for a moment, snow beginning to accumulate upon his face, giving him a pensive quality. "I doubt it."

"Hmm," Ramos simply responded as his hand crept closer and closer to the butt of his gun. His armored thumb lightly flipped up the clasp holding the sidearm in place and he gently began to slide the weapon out, still keeping his movements shielded from Shepard. "Just my luck, I suppose. A shame, that."

Now Shepard steeled his eyes upon Ramos, managing to pierce the dark visor that obscured the mercenary's face. Ramos halted his actions, trying to gauge when would be his moment to strike. His fingers tightened upon the handgun's grip and his inhalations began to increase until they were occurring every two seconds.

Now or never.

With a near imperceptible grunt, Ramos tried to shift his body as he lay upon the ground to bring his weapon to bear. But Shepard was faster. Ramos had not even begun to squeeze the trigger until his brain finally was able to comprehend that the barrel of Shepard's weapon had smoothly pointed itself directly at his forehead in the literal blink of an eye.

A flash began to expel from the barrel of Shepard's gun and Ramos' last thought was a curse towards Chimera for sending him to such a shit posting in the first place.

* * *

 _Tempelhofer – Ground Level_

In the shadow of the immense starport that towered above the neighborhoods, the remainder of the Chimera guard forces proceeded as normal with their monotonous work, having not even heard the sounds of the commotion more than half a mile up into the air. Every one of them was more or less concentrated on their own problems, the most popular issue at the moment trying to find a solution to endure the current weather that was otherwise infringing on their comfort level.

In short, bitching about the cold was the most popular thing to do among the garrison.

The main terminal of Tempelhofer was a gigantic arc-shaped complex that had been built a couple of centuries ago during a more tumultuous period for the city. As evidenced by the facades of shell limestone and gothic Germania styling, Tempelhofer's old building was quite firmly fixated in the past. These days, it was used as both a passenger hub and a museum for commuters looking to bustle to and from the Citadel— which just so happened to be the main destination that Berlin offered in terms of commercial flights (if anyone wanted to traverse further in the galaxy than just the Citadel, then the larger starport down in Munich offered a bevy of additional choices). Chimera troops milled about, embarking upon their set patrols, their glazed expressions seeing everything yet absorbing nothing while they carried on in their duties.

The cream of the crop, most certainly.

Not at all helping the Chimera contractors was the fact that the outpost situated right next to the main building at Tempelhofer was remarkably economical to the point of being a completely primitive in appearance. Occupying an empty square lot smaller than a fairly-sized shopping center, the Chimera outpost was composed of a series of prefabricated structures that looked like ugly shipping containers. The main office and armory were not exempt from being placed within these eyesores.

The main motor pool devoted to the outpost was not faring all that much better, as there was only one mechanic on station responsible for maintaining the site's four Lynx armored personal carriers—extremely ironclad, six-wheeled, with a powerful drivetrain, the Lynx represented the latest in technological innovations for ground transportation. Only problem was that, because of their relative novelty in their industry, they were of course rife with mechanical issues ranging from leakage of important fluids due to woefully bad sealing, electronics that developed constant faults thanks to improper wiring, and radio head units that kept ticking over to the gospel channel. The lone mechanic stationed at Tempelhofer always had his hands full with these vehicles, much to his agony.

On a particularly cold Berlin morning such as this, it was business as usual for everyone's minds to be distracted, the current political situation notwithstanding. That was why no one took any notice at first when a confident woman completely draped in smooth silver armor strode over from the main cargo lift, the arm of a young quarian girl held tightly in one of her hands. The quarian cried out, obviously struggling as it looked like she was attempting to free herself from the armored woman's grip.

When the two of them had made it within earshot of the four main guards responsible for patrolling the outpost's interior, the woman called out irritably, " _Excuse me?_ "

All four men turned, rather miffed at the interruption. Beneath their helmets, their expressions changed very little as they observed the armored woman march in their direction, although they did had to raise their eyebrows slightly as they eventually noticed that the woman was dragging a quarian—the presence of which in Berlin was a rarity—along with her.

The woman, her expression unreadable behind a glossy black visor, screeched to a halt, nearly yanking the young quarian off her feet. "Are you going to _explain_ yourselves or do I have to take this up with the supervisor?" she seethed as she shook the quarian's arm for emphasis. "Why the hell did I find a _quarian girl_ skulking about behind the perimeter without supervision?! Did she have an escort? Was she _expected?_ "

"Lady," one of the mercenaries said, forgetting protocol entirely in his exasperation, "what the fuck are you _talking_ about? I've never seen this girl in my life. No one told me shit, okay? Guys, did you know about this girl at all?"

The mercs all mumbled their denials, though they did so rather hesitantly.

"That's not all much better, is it?" the sharp-tongued woman sighed, the girl still whimpering as the human held onto her. "And Private, you'd do well to address me as ' _Lieutenant_.'"

If this were the military, all four men would have promptly snapped to attention in the face of such a harsh correction, but apathy and overall resentment at their current situation prevented any of them from mustering even a half-hearted response. Clearly, none of them had any qualms about potential punishment from their lackadaisical attitudes.

Another one of the Chimera troopers eyed the woman's armor up and down. "You don't have the insignia anywhere on you," he pointed out, a pitiful defense in the wake of the group's faux pas. "Where are your company logos?"

"Are you really stupid enough to question me when your entire work ethic has been thrown out the window for letting this girl wander about on site?" The woman roughly shook the quarian's arm for emphasis, causing the girl to whimper again.

"So what do you want us to do about it… _Lieutenant?_ " the merc grumbled before hanging his head, having come to the realization that his career in Chimera was probably over and done with after today.

"Apart from giving me the respect I deserve?" the woman countered. "Forget it. I'm probably asking too much of you as it is. Just put this girl in a holding cell until her parent or guardian comes to claim her once we contact them. After that, you're on your own."

The rest of the troopers looked at the woman blankly. "We don't _have_ holding cells on site," another merc chimed in.

"Then where do you keep your prisoners?!"

"We don't. They hardly give us the bare essentials to run this place, really. We just turn anyone we arrest over to the cops. It's simpler that way."

The woman, frustrated by the attitudes of the men, then gave a tired gesture towards an area behind a series of stacks of crates. "Whatever. If you're not going to take care of this problem, then I will. My associates over there will process this girl accordingly since all of you are apparently too lazy to do so. Make no mistake, I will definitely be passing a note to your supervisor about this."

The group of mercs had each been hoping that this lieutenant would simply let this go, as neither one had felt like they needed to be more proactive today, considering the awful weather and how boring their assignment was. To have this person come in here and yell into their faces, not to mention threatening to go to their supervisor, was enough to drive them out of the funk they had placed themselves in, for fear of reprisals.

"Fine," the closest man said as he reached out an armored gauntlet. "If you want it to be our problem, then it's our problem. We'll take the girl."

That was not good enough for the woman, who leaned away to get out of reach. "Are you serious? The time for you to step up has come and gone. All of you can consider yourself reported. Now, out of my way."

The men parted, but only out of disbelief as the woman brusquely pushed her way past them, the quarian girl still in tow. Obviously neither of them were particularly keen on having to explain to their supervisor that laziness had been the main factor for impeding them in their duties, so they decided to keep pace with the lieutenant in the hopes that they could change her mind and let them take the credit for this arrest.

Weaving through the stacks of metal crates alongside the barren wall of the main terminal, each of the mercs was wondering exactly where this woman was taking the quarian. The route she had selected did not lead to anywhere in particular—from what they figured, the path was certainly not heading anyplace important—so they were particularly befuddled to see if the woman knew something that they did not.

Imagine their surprise when the woman reached a dead end within the stacks of containers and slowly turned around, now holding onto the girl's hand rather gently instead of gripping her arm in a vice like she had been doing in the beginning.

The troopers milled about, blocking the only exit out of the tiny cul-de-sac, but not one of them was in a particularly malicious mood. "The hell is this?" one man blurted out in confusion before finding a twinge of smugness at being able to observed a perceived flaw in the form of this woman's apparently faulty sense of direction. "You lost, _Lieutenant?_ "

Instead of being flustered or otherwise aggravated, the troopers were surprised even more when the woman barked a curt laugh. "Lost? No, I'm right where I need to be. Out of sight from everyone else. The real question is, are _you_ all where you need to be?"

"I believe _that_ was my cue," a deep voice, grating like a rock slide, emitted from behind the Chimera mercenaries.

All four men turned one hundred and eighty degrees in the opposite direction, eyes wide with alarm behind their helmets as all of them came to the conclusion that they had been had.

Standing several feet above them, looking particularly mountainous, Grunt bared his teeth in a gleeful expression while his unarmed hands slowly clenched into fists, already anticipating the ensuing outcome and the devolution from the bleak monotony into chaos and violence.

Obviously none of the Chimera troopers had expected to be face-to-face with a krogan today and they were simply so startled at Grunt's appearance behind them that all of them forgot the simple fact that they were armed. Had they come to that realization several seconds earlier, perhaps a different outcome might have been possible in their favor.

Unfortunately for the squad, their hesitation proved to be their downfall as the krogan simply was able to sweep one arm parallel to the ground in quite a long arc, catching each trooper, one by one, off their feet and throwing them all carelessly into an adjacent corridor between the metallic containers. Grunt laughed uproariously as he smacked his fists together before proceeding into the tight passageway, eager to positively beat the ever-loving hell out of the men that had been indirectly responsible for the death of his warlord.

Gobsmacked, the troopers could only stare fate in the face as it took the form of a couple tons of steaming-mad krogan, bearing down upon them with just his fists. Grunt's victims did not manage enough breath to scream.

After the krogan had disappeared out of sight behind the bend to commit to the carnage, the woman finally let go of the quarian girl's hand so that she could remove the helmet that she had donned for this particular assignment.

"Sorry if I was a little too rough back there," Miranda Lawson said to the girl as she combed her fingers through her hair to alleviate the damage that the helmet had done. "Did I hurt you at all?"

"No, I was actually fine," Roahn said as she dusted herself off, trying to ignore the sounds of commotion being emitted from around the corner from Grunt's exuberant activities. "I wasn't actually in pain. That was just acting."

"How method of you. Not bad. Your father teach you that?"

Roahn shook her head. "Dad doesn't have the imagination for that sort of thing. I just thought that I needed to help sell the effect… or something to that effect."

"Ingenious," Miranda patted Roahn's shoulder affectionately before gently leading her away from the maze of containers, making sure the girl did not see the resulting mess that Grunt was apparently creating, judging from the gruesome splattering noises the krogan was finding joy in. "We might as well reunite you with your father anyway. No doubt he'll be relieved to see that this phase of the infiltration worked like a charm."

"No doubt," Roahn agreed, nearly looking back over her shoulder, very tempted to take a peek as to what manner of things Grunt was doing to the Chimera troopers.

Miranda's hand, however, placed firmly upon the back of Roahn's helmet, prevented the girl from doing so.

* * *

At the same time, Griggs, the supervisor currently on station, was aimlessly browsing through the extranet on his omni-tool, his feet kicked up onto his desk. He was alone in the portable office—a glorified mobile home made out of corrugated materials, which meant that it was basically made out of the cheapest crap imaginable. He disregarded the snow falling outside, as he, like his cohorts, found the cold to be a particularly miserable experience. Griggs simply did not have the time nor the energy to commit his all to the tasks at hand—Tempelhofer was such a shitty posting that anyone would be hard-pressed to imagine a more boring outpost to defend. He considered it an affront to his skills that he would be placed in charge of such a worthless station.

Griggs' disdain for just about everything meant that he garnered very little in the way of friends, much less acquaintances. The man was simply too oblivious and too acerbic to notice that his boorish behavior did hardly anything in terms of endearing himself to anyone.

Ironically, had Griggs been paying more attention outside from the very beginning, he probably would have been able to find some excitement to break the constant cycle of drab and seemingly worthless chores placed upon him. With the opacity on the windows set rather high and his attention fixated upon some random cooking program he had selected to pass the time, Griggs had missed all of the signs that something was wrong in his little slice of the kingdom.

His reign of obliviousness was finally ended when someone firmly rapped on the door from the outside, the noise causing Griggs to shoot up in his seat, startled. The supervisor hastily deactivated his omni-tool, patted his hair down, and headed towards the door, annoyed that he had been interrupted from his all-day siesta.

His annoyance vanished on the spot after he opened the door to discover that it was not a Chimera subordinate that had come calling, but two heavily armored soldiers in Alliance colors.

"Sergeant Rupert Griggs?" the first man inquired, a middle-aged individual with a thicket of combed black hair. His cohort was a Hispanic man, several shades taller, and impressively muscled. Griggs felt emasculated just by looking at the second man as he tried not to envision his own paunch he had accumulated thanks to his sedentary lifestyle.

"Yes?" Griggs said cautiously. "Who… who exactly am I speaking with?"

The first man tapped at the insignia upon his breastplate. "Alliance Logistics, sergeant. It's the end of the quarter—HQ should have told you we were coming. You remember how this works?"

"Oh right, right," Griggs nodded vaguely as he gestured for the men to step inside. "The audit."

"Yes," the Hispanic man repeated sagely. "The audit."

Griggs mentally smacked himself for his forgetfulness. Chimera's bean-counters loved to flex their muscles and initiate accountings from its outposts every quarter. It was an extremely disruptive process that did nothing but waste time and energy, in Griggs' opinion. Though lately, Chimera had been outsourcing these little investigations back to the Alliance as they were technically a licensed subcontractor. The government wanted to make sure that their money was being spent properly, no doubt.

"Could have sworn you guys started this whole thing later," Griggs mulled as he headed over to his desk to procure a datapad with the information the auditors needed. "Year's not even over yet. I know that the accounting department has got a hard-on for the numbers being all in order—and I can sympathize—but I'm really not sure why you need to get the information from me so soon. Can't you guys just mosey on over to HQ and solicit them for this shit?"

"You don't read the news much, do you?" the first man bumped his eyebrows. "We're all facing scrutiny on several fronts. The Alliance has to be even more thorough in its dealings with corporations like Chimera. That means diligence and accountability have to be in check here."

"I see. Everything in triplicate, eh?" Griggs then began grumbling to himself as he struggled to rapidly pull up the Tempelhofer spreadsheets denoting the monthly expenses for the fiscal year. Document upon document to peruse—this was going to take a while. "By the way, I didn't catch any of your names. I'm a bit old-fashioned in that I kind of like to know the name of whom I'm talking to."

The first man shrugged. "Sounds fair to me. I'm Lieutenant Colonel Kaidan Alenko and this is Captain James Vega, N7."

Slowly, Griggs scraped his gaze upward from the datapad. "Wait… Alenko. Vega. Aren't you two those war heroes or some—"

He never got to finish his sentence because James, in an effort to shut the man up, suddenly hurled out his fist in a massive punch that headed straight for Griggs' face. The punch landed squarely upon Griggs' jaw, spinning him all the way around and knocking the man unconscious in one fell swoop. Ungracefully, Griggs fell to the floor heavily, out like a light.

As James shook his hand after delivering the blow, Kaidan shot a glance towards his cohort. "That wasn't the direction _I_ would've taken, but I suppose there's nothing we can do about it now."

"What?" James inquired genuinely. "Shepard said to disable the security around this place covertly. I did that."

"Yeah, but we had cuffs. We had tape. I thought we were just going to bind this guy up and gag him, _not_ knock him out."

"You can still do that _now_. Tape him to the piping over in the corner."

"That's hardly the point, is it? He's already unconscious. He probably has a concussion and it'll be a miracle if he manages to remember the last few minutes before you broke his jaw."

James considered this as he whistled lowly, staring rather placidly at Griggs' shallowly breathing body. "You think there's a chance of that happening?"

Kaidan just shook his head in derision. "Honestly? No idea. Let's just get this over with. Grab his feet."

* * *

Three minutes later the whole group had congregated around the row of Lynx armored trucks, with two of the vehicles already undergoing preparations to be utilized as quickly as it could be physically possible to achieve. Snow continued to drift downward lazily, building up a thin layer over the concrete ground that caused slight crunching noises whenever anyone stepped on by, leaving their footprints embedded in the slush.

The Lynx were odd vehicles; white, angular armor coated the majority of the exterior bodywork while there was a depression near the back near where the exit ramp was that was big enough to fit a few people—a truck bed most likely meant for guards to keep overwatch. Two giant doors flanked the front cabin, which had enough room for three individuals to seat themselves relatively comfortably.

Shepard, on instinct, headed for the driver's door of the first Lynx, but Liara quickly stepped in and halted his progress. "Not this time," she emphasized by pressing his chest firmly with a singular finger, pushing him back a step. " _I'm_ going to drive this thing."

Liara adorned the man with all her heart, but it was not a big secret that Shepard's driving skills were not all that up to snuff. Whether it was a Mako or a skycar, Liara always had been the most vocal critic of Shepard's abilities behind the wheel, routinely screeching in panic whenever the man tried to steer the thing. It was not that Shepard had a habit of crashing into objects, but his rather aggressive driving style was a bit too _exuberant_ for Liara's tastes.

There was no time to debate this, so Shepard quickly acquiesced to the forceful asari. "If you insist."

On the other hand, Grunt, having finished with his disposal of the Chimera soldiers he had so thoroughly destroyed, grinned as he opened the door to the second truck. "Mine!" he declared triumphantly, the engine roaring to life soon after.

Shepard honestly believed there could not be a more dangerous combination of a krogan and a fuel cell-powered vehicle, but there was also the futile prospect of having to convince Grunt to let someone else take the wheel, so Shepard decided against dissuading him. He was actually more intrigued to learn that apparently the interior of the Lynx was spacious enough to accommodate a wide range of individuals who were not human, krogan included (although Grunt ended up having to slide the seat all the way back to fit his bulky frame).

Miranda, James, Jack clambered into the bed of Grunt's Lynx, having prepped their weapons beforehand, while Kasumi took the passenger seat next to the krogan. Kaidan and Javik took the uncovered rearward compartment of Liara's Lynx, while Shepard, Roahn, and Garrus prepared to join them in due time.

"Did Sam and Nya manage to get themselves to safety?" Shepard asked Garrus as he approached him near the first Lynx. Roahn was clambering on board the vehicle at this time, intent on taking the middle seat next to Liara.

The turian nodded. "They just let me know that they made it out of the field and are now taking the train into the city. They definitely weren't keen on keeping _too_ close to us."

"Can't say that I blame them. They're civilians. This isn't their fight."

"I suppose not," Garrus admitted before he tilted his head in admiration, the movements of his mandibles translating into a smile that seeped through the mist and biting frost. "Once more unto the breach, eh, Shepard?"

The commander checked the slide of his rifle, making sure that a thermal clip was slotted securely in place. "Once more. For the last time, I hope."

"I'll drink to that."

Shepard was about to reply when he noticed a faint line of red light seep its way between the snowflakes in their descending patterns. His eyes automatically tracked the direction he perceived the light to be heading in and managed to spot, for a split second, the tiniest red dot that flickered its way upon the side of the Lynx, wavering to an organic beat.

Sniper.

"Get down!" Shepard bellowed as he shoved Garrus to the ground. The lingering echo of a shot rang out a second after the harsh ping of the bullet impacted itself uselessly upon the armored hull of the vehicle. Both Shepard and Garrus had their rifles out as they lay upon the frosty ground, prone, their breath lodged in their throats.

The air abruptly died down, the snow seemingly muffling all noise.

"Dad!" Shepard heard Roahn scream from inside the truck, but he was too fixated on the person shooting at him that he could not respond to the girl.

"Thought we got all of the troops in this sector," Shepard grunted as he hugged close to the truck.

"Apparently we didn't. I don't have a good view. Do you see him?" Garrus whispered to Shepard as they maneuvered behind one of the Lynx's front tires.

Shepard rapidly scanned the top of the nearby terminal through his scope, using his memory and trained ear to pinpoint the direction in which the bullet had traveled. A glint near one of the towering windows caught his attention and he screwed up his focus.

"Got him. Air terminal. Fifth floor on the fire escape. Yep—Chimera armor."

"Obviously," Garrus drolly murmured before he leaned out and squeezed the trigger once on his sniper rifle. There was a ferocious kickback to the weapon, as well as a deafening sound, but the turian was able to absorb such discomforts quite handedly while showing little discomfort.

Through the scope, Shepard saw the top of the sniper's helmet briefly impact before crumpling inward completely. A puff of vaporized blood emitted in the frozen air and the sniper fell backwards, not moving.

"You got him," Shepard told Garrus as he got to his feet. "Let's get the hell out of here."

Both men hustled on board Liara's Lynx and Shepard made a rotating gesture in the air to Grunt, a signal to start their little convoy and get it on the road. Grunt did so with gusto, pummeling the gas pedal and sending the wheels of his Lynx squealing upon the slippery ground before they finally gained traction.

"You guys okay?" Liara asked as Shepard clambered into the interior of her truck, squeezing Roahn between them.

"So far. I think that sniper might have been the last one. I don't know if he managed to call for backup or not." Shepard then slammed his gauntleted hand upon the dashboard in frustration. "Two and a half miles from here to the Reichstag, as the crow flies. That's two and a half miles of being pursued all while we're in the middle of a crowded city— _if_ he got a call out in time. This is just getting better by the minute."

"Relax," Liara assured as she carefully eased the Lynx onto the main road, successfully managing to merge it in traffic to ease it into the middle lane, Grunt's truck right behind her. "With any luck, we won't run into any trouble."

As if the universe was laughing at Liara, the air was suddenly split by the harsh whine of what was unquestionably police sirens. Loud. _En masse_. Several units, from the chorus effect that was apparent.

Shepard's face flattened as he peered over at the asari. "You want to rethink your statement?" he inquired before he tentatively turned away to stick his head out the window for a quick moment.

His heart sank as he looked down the street behind the truck. Chimera had mobilized quicker than they had expected as it looked like there were at least eight cruisers with flashing lights, combined with several combat cycles, headed in their direction. The private military vehicles swerved and weaved through the traffic among the crowded streets, managing to force open a lane that gave them a direct line of sight to their quarry: Shepard.

Faint black dots now started to pinprick the air and Shepard was now even more discouraged as a squadron of gunships dropped from the clouds, their engines spitting fire as they spiraled on down to join in on the action. Two heavy machine guns and a concussive cannon made those gunships a serious threat if they also belonged to Chimera—a few blasts from those guns had the ability to rip apart a Lynx with ease.

"Contact on our six," he barked into his omni-tool. "Ground and air units. Get ready, everyone. This is it!"

To Roahn, Shepard turned as he hefted his rifle in preparation. "Stay down as low as possible, okay?"

"I will," she promised, the familiar sting of adrenaline beginning to surge through her veins, making it impossible to relax. _Combat. Combat. Combat_. Keelah, she had no idea what such a concept would entail!

" _We see them, Shep_ ," Kasumi said over the comms. " _Looks like the front of the pack are all standard chase units—regular fuel cell automotives and pursuit cycles. Air support is made up of Mantises. And… we've got a couple of Makos and Hammerheads bringing up the rear._ "

" _Jack and I will handle the gunships_ ," Miranda spoke up.

" _I'll try to thin out some of the cycles and the Hammerheads_ ," Garrus said from the back.

" _The three of us_ ," Kaidan said, referring to himself, Javik, and James, " _will aim for the Makos and some of the cars."_

" _And I'll…_ " Grunt practically wriggled out a laugh of anticipation as he was probably bouncing up and down behind the wheel of the Lynx, "… _do what I do best! Mayhem and chaos—my specialty._ "

"You have anything in mind for me?" Liara called, her eyes frantically scanning the imbroglio of controlled chaos that was the city of Berlin as it lay ahead of her.

"Just drive and keep us all alive," Shepard grimly said back. "We have no choice but to take the highways to keep our speed up. Next main road, take a left—the map shows that it'll lead us into a tunnel. We can shake the Mantises, at least, if we go that way."

"All… right," Liara muttered tentatively as she scanned the approaching street sign, her lips struggling to pronounce the foreign word. "Going left on… _Yorckstrasse?_ These human names! What were they thinking?!"

Holding onto the railing of the Lynx's chassis, Shepard gritted his teeth as he partially leaned out the window, gun aloft and prepared to disperse destruction. "Don't ask, just drive!"

As the envoy of Chimera troops moved ever closer, the uncomfortable ring of machine gun fire began to pop off to ward them back. Muffled screams and shouts lined the air from pedestrian and combatant alike.

Chaos queued up to deliver its salvo in turn as the company raced through the streets.

* * *

A few miles away, in the deep recesses of yet another Chimera facility, mechanical arms whirred to life in a circular room. Mist flooded the air of the room and the walls were lined with slots for individual single-rider vehicles. From the ceiling, a thick grappling arm descended, carrying out the commands sent to the circuits lining the shafts and axles of the appendage. The mechanical arm rotated from the center of the room and suddenly halted in front of one of the vehicle slots. Edging forward, the arm gently grasped one of the motorcycles upon its central axis, the tongs inserted perfectly upon two locking points.

With a heavy whirring noise, the arm withdrew with the vehicle in its grip, un-slotting the motorcycle with several series of clicks. The metal column retreated back into the centerpoint of the room before the entire subassembly was lifted upward.

Once the arm had left the room, still carrying the cycle in its cold fingers, it was eventually positioned over a narrow track in the dark bowels of the facility. The arm lowered the vehicle gently onto the track and let go, where automated accelerators gently began to ease the machine forward upon the downward slope, edging it towards the exit from the gloomy murk.

Heavy doors filed open, allowing the cycle to gently roll to a stop within a dimly-lit garage. The vehicle had shuttered to a standstill directly in the middle of a painted circle that was ringed four times with the word "Caution" written in white block lettering on the ground.

Overhead lights that had been flashing red the entire time the motorcycle was being unloaded from the central chamber now switched over to green—the universal sign that it was now clear to proceed. The large figure that had been positioned at the edge of the painted circle darkly looked down at the floor before steadily walking forward, easily swinging a massive leg over the cycle's wide frame.

The Tomahawk was an experimental motorcycle, meant for use in intense chase sequences, but it had officially been scrapped a decade ago due to ballooning costs and constant budget cuts for the manufacturer. Known for not being very prudent with its finances to begin with, Chimera had purchased the remaining stock of Tomahawks for use in its own ranks, a privilege granted to a select few of its employees.

The Legionnaire happened to be one of those employees.

The cyborg spent the next few minutes in total silence as he prepared the Tomahawk for departure. The Tomahawk had a design that was not exactly ergonomic for organics, which is where the Legionnaire had the advantage. The retro and backwards-looking Art Deco-inspired swoops in the styling of the Tomahawk were fashioned from solid blocks of aluminum, making the motorcycle itself quite heavy.

Weight was not the issue with the Tomahawk though, as its hydrogen fuel cell engine was capable of producing 1465 horsepower with a calculated top speed of 320 miles an hour. Although it may have looked like it had two wheels, like most motorcycles, the Tomahawk actually had _four_. They were coupled closely to one another—two in the front and two in the back—which gave it its motorcycle-like appearance and all of the wheels were sprung independently, granting the vehicle the ability to lean into corners and to allow for effective counter-steering.

Footsteps were now signaling the approach of an individual, but the Legionnaire did not even turn to perceive the Chimera tech that had started to jog towards him—a woman, already breathless.

"S-Sir?" the tech coughed, her lips fumbling her words as she looked upon the gargantuan metal man. "Senator Larsen s-said—"

Ignoring her, the Legionnaire continued prepping the Tomahawk for its utilization on the road. He did not want to hear the name "Larsen" right about now. He did not want to talk about him or see him, for that matter. In fact, just repeating the name "Larsen" over and over again was merely serving to bring what little blood was in his body back to a boil, his brain stewing with hateful thoughts and images as he deliberately kept on preparing the motorcycle whilst denying this woman basic courtesies.

The tech halted her sentence, looked lost for a second, and tried again. "S-Senator Larsen said that… you are not to leave the building. He w-wants you in place at the Reichstag."

Only a hiss escaped the Legionnaire's vocabulator as he finally gunned the throttle, creating a pulsating roar that fled through the exhaust pipe, rumbling around the tight garage. The incidental noises that his chassis naturally exuded also contributed to the atmospherics, continuing to decline offering the woman an answer.

"It is his _order_ —" the tech protested but was clearly becoming more and more distraught from the terrifying cyborg's refusal to respect her or the wishes of her boss.

Without even looking, the Legionnaire shot out a thick arm, his chilled fingers managing to wrap nearly all the way around the tech's head. The woman gurgled in pain, her cheeks mashed together, blood now starting to dribble from the corner of her smashed mouth.

Calm breath filtered from the air vents in the Legionnaire's head as he still refused to meet the tech's eye. It would be so simple for him to squeeze his fingers and the head of the woman would crumple and explode in a torrent of blood and gore. A few more pounds of pressure and her skull would crack like and egg. The tech's hands beat uselessly at the Legionnaire's lone arm holding her in place and was now starting to make disgusting noises of panic and agony.

The cyborg gave a curt grunt. This was a waste of time. There were other matters he needed to attend to.

Nothing would keep him from his destiny. Not even Larsen. Soon, even Larsen would realize just how little control he himself maintained over those he thought were his inferior.

The Legionnaire savored the feeling of holding the woman's life literally in his hands before the present fell back upon him. He pushed the tech at the same time that he released his hand. The woman, suddenly freed, stumbled and fell to the ground, breathing shallowly in a daze. Splotchy blood marred the Legionnaire's fingers in addition to clumps of her hair. He shook the organic matter off with a singular and powerful motion.

Twisting the throttle and adjusting his center of gravity upon the Tomahawk, the Legionnaire's head had been staring forward the entire time as he lifted his entire weight upon the bike after gently pushing off with a foot. The wheels squealed in a high-pitched note before they managed to grip the ground, sending him screaming out through the corridor, up the access shaft, and into the frigid Berlin morning where a frightful gust of icy-cold air and snow greeted him in a thick wall.

The Tomahawk was airborne for a second before the wheels met the pavement. The chassis slammed into the ground once, sending up sparks.

 _Soon, Shepard. Soon._

* * *

To say that Liara T'Soni was not mentally frayed at this point in time would be stretching things a bit. She was certainly not calm, to say the least.

The asari was more suited for working behind the scenes, as her career as an information broker had proved. Fighting on the front lines was a secondary ability she had developed over the years, mostly as a result of Shepard's tutelage.

Driving a vehicle, especially one as large as the Lynx, was far beyond her skillset however.

The Lynx was incredibly sluggish in its steering. Turning the wheel on this monster felt like the entire column was set in concrete. The brakes had the distinct feeling that they were made out of cheese for they were so incredibly ineffective, not to mention that there was the distinct wall of gunfire that had been hounding them for the past few minutes, adding only more tension to the situation.

Liara now knew that she could never be afforded any more opportunities to criticize Shepard about his driving ever again.

Shepard had been barking out directions for her to follow the entire time, which proved to be somewhat disconcerting. Berlin was a maze, plain and simple. The architecture on this planet was not at all like the smoothly constructed buildings Liara had grown up with on Thessia, as the edifices here were all part of a mishmash of disparate stylings all crammed together for the sake of squishing more people into a smaller area. The roads also did not seem to be following any sense of logic and order—they tended to twist and curve, not at all keeping to a simple grid pattern that would otherwise make navigating so much easier. Adding another degree of difficulty were all the cars that lined the roads as everyone had found themselves all caught up in the morning rush hour. Fortunately, the drivers here seemed to have a shred of good sense once they had sensed that a commotion was encroaching from their rear, but Liara had unfortunately sideswiped a few errant vehicles in the process of carving an avenue through the gridlock, creating white gouges in their paint as her Lynx squeezed on by.

Liara dimly heard Shepard calling for her to make an immediate right. There was something else in his sentence about a park, but that was all immaterial for the time being. She found it quite an effort to crank the wheel so that the Lynx could turn about without tipping over. Not as easy of a prospect as it sounded.

The sound of incoming bullets pinging against the Lynx's armor was quite apparent to her, but now that Liara saw they were headed into a small tunnel, she felt that she could relax as she no longer had to worry about the gunships in the air taking shots against them now.

Roahn squirmed against Liara's side while her father partially stuck his head out the window, firing all the while and causing the intense blowback of hot air to cook the interior of the front cabin. Staccato inferno beats jackhammered the air as Shepard laid down upon the trigger, his precise aim spider-webbing the windshield of a pursuing Mercedes, killing the driver and causing it to list towards the wall and perish in a fiery explosion.

"Stay down, Roahn!" Liara screamed out as she took panicked looks towards the girl to make sure that she was all right. The quarian was breathing heavily, her eyes locked wide open, but she said not a word as she hunkered down in the middle of the bench, grabbed at the front hand railing, and tried her damnedest to be brave.

Trillions of bright iotas clustered upon the walls of the tunnels flashed advertisements in tandem, only providing more distractions for the errant drivers. The tunnel flashed aqua, then leafy, then cardinal as every single imaginable color scythed brilliantly in time to the rapid-fire reports of gun shots—the accompanying soundtrack.

Light seared through the artificial veneer. There could not be more than half a mile left of this tunnel to go. Traffic had luckily cleared up by then, giving both Lynx trucks an avenue to speed down.

Next to them, Shepard mouthed a quiet curse as he had to spend valuable seconds in ejecting a spent thermal clip. To compensate, Shepard unleashed a concussive burst from the lower barrel on his rifle, sending a large projectile screaming across the air. The concussive shot slammed into the front of an onrushing BMW, crumpling its hood and sending it flipping end over end in the air, sending sparks and debris flying.

Bursting back out into the dim and cloudy open air, the long drive continued.

* * *

" _Gare, on your left!_ "

Kasumi's voice crackled over the comm, but Garrus had already spotted the threat that she had been warning him about. Coming up from a side street, a Chimera motorcycle unit suddenly roared into view, their drivers toting submachine guns and grenade launchers. Heavy stuff for a glorified bike gang.

"I see them, Kas. Hang on."

The turian let out a breath and rested his sniper rifle upon the frame of the jiggling Lynx while he planted his feet so that he would not go sailing away in case the vehicle took an unexpected turn. Garrus lined his aim up with the point man at the head of the approaching unit, too far away for assault rifles to effectively reach, but with his sniper rifle, it was like he could just reach out and _touch_ them.

In point of fact, that was exactly what he did.

The sniper rifle jolted as Garrus applied gentle pressure to the trigger. A red globule burst from the lead cyclist's heart in astonishment, the force of the shot punching cleanly through muscle and bone. The force from the bullet knocked the instantly-dead man clean off the bike, itself starting a chain of mishaps as the rider who had been traveling closely behind him could not avoid the toppling corpse in time to get clear. The second rider yanked on his handlebars, but the wheels locked up as they drove over the man's deceased cohort, sending the second Chimera agent flipping over his bike and landing heavily enough on the concrete to break bones.

" _Nice_ ," Kasumi replied from the other Lynx, giving her husband a playful wave. " _Now it's my turn._ "

The remaining two bike riders were close enough for small-arms fire but these Chimera troopers were not disciplined enough to focus their fire onto one particular target. The rounds from their machine guns sparked uselessly off of the heavy armor of the Lynx and their grenade launcher projectiles rebounded comically off the trucks as they were too close to arm themselves in time.

Kasumi then popped her head up through the passenger window and sprayed a small line with her submachine gun towards the Chimera bikers. A series of bullets smattered one man in the head, killing him straight out and sending his motorcycle flipping end over end.

The final biker performed a double-take as he realized that he was the only one out of his squad remaining, perhaps going through a moment of reflection that this was not the sort of career path he should have taken and that he should have gone to college instead. Regardless, there was not any more time for him to be regretful over poor life choices for Kasumi rose up again and fired her weapon in another short burst, riddling the final trooper and making him fall off as well.

There was little time to celebrate as the oft-employed cliché of having to punch through wave after wave of seemingly infinite forces of bad guys was out on display when a Hammerhead infantry fighting vehicle roared out from the corner of an intersection they had just passed, hoverjets burning sapphire-blue—so hot that they were leaving scorch marks on the road. On the side of the Hammerhead was, of course, Chimera's winged insignia.

" _Well, that's no good_ ," Kasumi said rather nonchalantly. " _How much ordinance are we going to have to face until we actually reach the building?_ "

"As much as it takes," Garrus grimly replied as he set his sights back up. "We've got this. Don't worry."

The Hammerhead wobbled as it fought to steady itself upon the flat tarmac. Garrus knew from experience that the Hammerhead was severely stunted in terms of traveling at an even speed—the vehicle was notorious for overheating quite quickly despite its relative light weight.

The singular turret upon the Hammerhead swiveled as it attempted to overcome the vehicle's swaying. It unleashed a series of missiles in rapid fashion, one after the other. But the gunner's aim was poor and all of the projectiles ended up sailing harmlessly down the boulevard. Chimera had apparently not opted for the guided missile package. Yet another example of budget cuts doing more harm than good to an organization, ironically enough.

Garrus and Kasumi had not wasted any time, however. The Hammerhead, although possessing a powerful gun, had extremely weak armor that was even susceptible to small-arms fire. The couple simply and calmly started plugging away at the hovercraft, not letting up in their assault from their barking weapons, and soon enough a fire began to sprout from the rear of the Hammerhead, caused by the shield module overloading. The fire grew as Kasumi and Garrus kept shooting and in short order the entire Hammerhead was consumed by a brilliant crimson conflagration that mushroomed into the air and billowed thick, choking smoke. Parts rained down from above, still trailing ash and glowing red.

Glancing at the other, the married couple shared a quick grin.

* * *

Grunt was similarly laughing, but not in the sort of fashion that one would conduct in the presence of a spouse. No, the krogan was having an all-out _blast_ and he was reveling in the chaos.

Unable to help himself, Grunt began to weave his own Lynx back and forth, upending chase vehicles and knocking hapless troopers off their motorcycles as they tried to drive past. These series of lurching motions earned him shouts of ire from his passengers, but he ignored him for he was having too much fun.

" _Hah!_ " the krogan bellowed as he angled the Lynx into a head-on collision with a Mercedes carrying additional Chimera troops, who had apparently been driving on the wrong side of the road because of their unfamiliarity of Germany's rules of the road. The Lynx's torque enabled it to keep on moving once it almost lazily smashed the car aside, hardly slowed by the impact. The occupants of the sedan, on the other hand, had been ejected from the car and subsequently ground to hamburger by the enormous wheels of the Lynx.

Another car, this one a VW, pulled up alongside Grunt's Lynx and almost immediately opened fire. The bulletproof driver's window cracked angrily, but held firm. Angered by the boldness of the mercenaries, Grunt savagely yanked the wheel to the left, catching the car and driving it into the lanes of oncoming traffic.

"Heh. Bye," the krogan mockingly waved.

The VW could do nothing to change its trajectory and crashed headlong into the front of a heavy hauler, utterly disintegrating the car but leaving the larger truck mostly intact. Grunt spared another laugh to himself as he got his Lynx back behind Shepard's, having some difficulty with the transmission as the gears ground agonizingly while he tried to shift up into fourth.

Another Hammerhead dropped down from above, looking to halt the push that Shepard's convoy was making. It quickly inserted itself between the two Lynx trucks and set off a singular burst that made its way directly to Grunt's front cabin. The windshield was briefly awash with a fearsome display of fire and smoke, but the Lynx persevered quite easily, shrugging off the detonation in a handy fashion.

The Hammerhead had slowed for that one attempt to disable Grunt's vehicle. Conversely, Grunt had not.

The Lynx plowed straight through the Hammerhead with a ferocious tearing noise, crashing through the thinly armored hovercraft as if it had been made of paper. The Hammerhead split in half, spraying the road with its metallic innards, electricity and sparking conflagrations lighting the air all around the victorious truck as it proceeded on through.

"Bring me more," Grunt murmured to himself as his foot pressed further down upon the gas pedal.

* * *

When the Lynx trucks had exited the tunnel just a few minutes previously, they had almost immediately been set on again by the Mantis gunships, who were descending from on high to strafe the trucks with their powerful machine guns. Persecute and destroy, the Mantis motto.

One of the gunships edged around a tall arbor that had been planted in the median of the avenue, trying to angle in for a better line of attack. Miranda, however, saw this coming and reached within the well of dark energy that lurked underneath her skin, drawing it out and shaping it into a wall of pure force and manipulation, and sent it blasting away from her fingertips, grunting as the effort took some of her strength away.

The Mantis could do nothing to evade the approaching biotic attack, despite the efforts of its pilot. The warp field lassoed itself around one of the Mantis' engines, crumpling it, and shearing it away from the main hull. Listing heavily to one side, the Mantis temporarily tried to boost power to its remaining engines, but a flaw in the gunship's design meant that the Mantis could not remain aloft unless all of its engines were performing optimally. In the end, the Mantis entered a death spiral from which it could not escape, alarms blaring through the cockpit, and it crashed in an open field a kilometer away from the quarry it had been chasing.

"Not bad," Miranda heard someone say behind her and she turned to see Jack shoot her a wry smirk. "…For a cheerleader."

Miranda could not help but grin back as the wind threatened to whip her hair and sleet into her eyes. "The 'cheerleader' has downed one more gunship than you."

"Oh, are we playing _that_ game?" Jack's smile turned catlike as she narrowed her eyes.

"You seem to have me confused with someone else. I don't play."

"One of these days," Jack said as she straightened up, "you're going to figure out that the solution to your bitchiness is that you need to get laid."

" _Excuse_ me?"

Jack was now conveniently ignoring Miranda as she levelled an explosive shockwave that had drawn in energy up from her arms to expel from her hands. The seismic shock glimmered to life in the sky before imploding in a flash, sending out a Praxis wave that served to knock another Mantis gunship right out of the air. Thrown heavily to the ground, the gunship collided with the ground and embarked upon a torturous slide that ripped chunks of road from the earth while shredding the undercarriage of the craft.

The former convict smirked as she levelled a sarcastic salute towards Miranda. "All tied up."

The laugh that expelled from Miranda's lungs was short-lived and frosty. "Not for long," she levelled a knowing stare at her cohort before crouching down to deliver another salvo of dark energy against their hapless enemies.

* * *

James Vega had been involved in more campaigns than he could count, but that did not lessen the indignation and fear that accompanied the sensation of a bullet whizzing by his face, rippling the muscles of his body as the invisible pulse hurtled through him.

The fact that this time, it was his countrymen he was fighting— _humans_ —angered him even more because of their blatant stupidity.

 _First Cerberus, now Chimera. Has no one learned that you can't take on Shepard in a fight and expect to come out on top?!_

Vega's internal monologues would have to remain unvoiced for the litany of vehicles still in pursuit commanded his attention. Kaidan and Javik were laying down the same cover fire in the other vehicle, and between the two of them, they were doing an admirable job in warding off the heavier vehicles that threatened to upend their progress.

A Mercedes SUV roared up, filled to the brim with more troopers. Vega's precise fire blew out its tires and killed the men sitting up front, listless past a broken windshield. A Mako tank crept up from the lower roads, cannons barking. Kaidan's rocket launcher caught the behemoth perfectly, flipping it upside down and completely halting it in place. Javik was using his particle rifle to slice offending cars and tanks in two, leaving their husks to smoke on the side of the road. None of the seasoned soldiers took any pleasure in their work, their movements almost robotic in their exactitude, rigorous and defined.

Despite the danger and the utter chaos riding in the back of the Lynx, Vega managed to keep his breathing at an even pace, very deliberate.

The inviting green boundary of the Tiergarten, the park at the heart of Berlin's government sector, beckoned just half a mile away. A thin tower, perched with a glimmering figure shone like a distant prize just further down the road.

Nearly there, now.

* * *

 _Meanwhile_

Sam McLeod was trying his damnedest right about now to keep an optimistic mind about things as he was trekking through the Tiergarten with Nya at his side, both of whom were attempting to distract themselves with life using the sights and sounds of the unfamiliar city to the advantage as best as they could. The park that was the Tiergarten was large and expansive—it reminded Sam of New York City's own Central Park, but this was more densely forested, a little _wilder_.

Old World penchants, indeed. The Tiergarten was home to a bevy of dirt paths that seemed to spread aimlessly around the boundaries of the park. Despite being located in the heart of one of the most major cities on the continent, if one were to embark just a few feet into the forested areas, one could easily imagine that they had stepped into a thicket out in the middle of nowhere, as there were no indications that one could glean that would denote their urban whereabouts. Even in winter, when all the leaves had fallen off the trees and snow blanketed the ground, the overwhelming silence dominated all.

Both Sam and Nya had a good inkling that, right about this time, Shepard and company were no doubt raising all sorts of a ruckus around the city in their attempt to reach the Reichstag (which, ironically, was only a quarter of a mile away from where Sam and Nya were right now). For the two, it was hard to keep themselves relatively calm when they knew that a column of gunfire and overall mayhem were most likely fast approaching this location, given the threat that Shepard represented to the government at the time.

The couple had not shared a single word since they had left Berlin's subway system, too anxious to make small talk. They had silently proceeded to savor the Tiergarten area, both on the same mental wavelength as they embarked on their own exploration. Several times they cocked their head as they meandered along the many pathways that the park offered, intent on attempting to discern the telltale crackle of gunfire, but when silence greeted them at every turn, they soon gave up on trying to feed their worries.

Berlin would offer them plenty of distractions, in any case.

"Huh," Sam muttered as he turned his head to track a woman on a bicycle that had just ridden past him.

Nya craned her neck and shrugged at the sight. "It was just a woman on a bike, Sam. Nothing special there."

"No, it was a woman on a bike drinking a beer at the same time."

"So?"

"So," Sam was now walking backwards as his face lit up, "that's just the most brilliant thing I've ever seen. And she was drinking from an actual _glass_ , not a can! The control!"

Nya gave a derisive snort as she lightly thwacked her husband on the arm. "You're all worked up because you saw someone drinking and driving?"

"It's just not heavily enforced over here, not like where we live. Screw UNAS, Germany has got it figured out!"

"You can always drink and bike back home, dear."

" _And_ get myself arrested in the process while earning points on my license," Sam added. "They still don't like intoxicated people being in control of any moving vehicle over there."

"I wonder why," Nya said flatly. Santa Cruz had faced a spot of trouble lately for drunk drivers crashing their cars among the hilly roads for years. The traffic fines had been steepened as a result, which had angered the residents.

As they continued to walk, the pair began to notice a growing clamor of what was unmistakably the collective chanting of a mass of people congregated into one area. A crowd was near the direction of the Reichstag, from what they could discern with just their ears.

"The hell is that?" Sam squinted his eyes. "What, is a riot going on over there or something?"

"Don't know," Nya offered with a shrug, her eyes nebulous behind her crimson visor. "Want to check it out?"

"Why not? This day's going to be interesting regardless anyway."

They crossed a nearby trail and headed towards where the forest abruptly ended at the edge of an open field. The uproar of diverse raised voices grew louder and louder as they approached, a solid indication that they were heading in the right direction, ensuring that their curiosity would be sated.

On the other hand, their progress would soon be halted as they rounded a particularly thick tree while struggling not to slip in patches of ice, now facing a Chimera soldier who was guarding the only way out of the park, a sour expression embedded upon his face.

"You can't go ahead," the soldier held up a hand, preventing Sam and Nya from proceeding any further.

Sam, a little mistrustful, glanced at the offending appendage and back to the mercenary's face. "Any particular reason why? Just wanted to check things out."

"No more people are to be allowed to participate in the protest. We're going to be clearing everyone out momentarily. And don't even think about trying to sneak around me. I've got eyes in the back of my head."

"Protest?" Nya tilted her head. "What are the people protesting about, exactly?"

The Chimera mercenary, stone-faced, blatantly ignored the quarian's question, which had the effect of sending Sam's blood into a boil. Such obvious racism that this merc dared to exhibit to his wife's face! He always had the tendency to become quite mad whenever someone insulted his wife because of her race. Nya had lived with the prejudice nearly her whole life, so she was used to this sort of treatment and had assured her husband several times in the past that she was not hurt too badly by most cutting remarks. Sam, conversely, was struggling to contain himself as he turned an impressive shade of red in the process.

"You heard her," Sam spoke slowly to the man. "What is the protest about?"

"Apparently a bunch of anarchists are protesting against the PMCs in front of the main Senate building," the merc offered immediately (thereby proving his own racism). "It's not going to last much longer, actually. We've got orders to go in and clear them out in the next few… wait, you look familiar."

Sam blinked. He could not see how he was familiar to this man at all. He had never seen this Chimera soldier before in his life. Sam would soon be provided with an explanation when the merc engaged his omni-tool and accessed a video file—security footage—and paused it on a particular section for Sam and Nya to view.

"Aren't you… this person?" the man gestured to a particular point on the screen. "We got a blip on our security screens near Tempelhofer. Something to do with persons of extreme interest."

Sam leaned forward and screwed up his eyes, indeed recognizing himself right off the bat in the film. The watermark in the lower right-hand corner denoted that this was a section of security footage from Tempelhofer—the starport that Sam had deposited Shepard and everyone else at. The video file had managed to catch Sam exiting his ship and even exchanging a few words with the impressively decked out Commander Shepard in such a high resolution that one could even see the faint blemishes on his own skin from the cold temperatures.

Caught, Sam knew that he had no choice but to do one thing: be as difficult as possible.

"No, that's not me. You're mistaken," Sam said in dull tone, keeping his own expression level, as if he was being insulted from this association.

The unimpressed merc glanced at the picture again, which was clearly showcasing Sam's bearded face. Only a complete dolt would not catch the similarities.

"You weren't at Tempelhofer?" the man asked, arcing an eyebrow.

"Tempel… hofer," Sam pretended to be completely clueless. "How do you spell that? Actually, can you write it down for me? How many letters are in that word? Eight? Ten?"

Becoming more and more annoyed with Sam's antics, the guard pressed on. "And you don't recognize this other person in the photo, I take it?" The Chimera soldier was now pointing at Shepard on the screen, another figure that should have been immediately recognizable to any human.

Still Sam attempted to gaslight the man. "No clue. Looks like a cosplayer. Wait! Give me a hint. Is that man part of the cast of Star Trek reboot?"

"Sir, are you a complete retard?"

" _Retard?_ " Sam pretended to act shocked. "I thought the PC community outlawed that word centuries ago. That's bold of you, sir. Good one."

The merc explosively sighed, just about fed up with Sam's boorish behavior. "Right, I'm just going to assume that you're a total moron."

"Funny. The feeling goes both ways."

Before the soldier could suitably come up with a response to Sam's pointed verbal attack, there was a harsh clunking noise and a snapping of wood as bits of timber and snow sprayed out in a white and brown arc. The Chimera operative shuddered, his eyes partially rolling upwards into the back of his head, and collapsed at Sam's feet, revealing Nya standing behind him, holding the remains of what had been a fallen and particularly thick tree branch. The bough had snapped off down the middle, jagged chips rimming the stump when the quarian had brought the branch slamming down upon the soldier's head.

Sam mildly glanced down at the unconscious man before stepping over the prostrate body. "Eyes in the back of his head, indeed."

Internally, he was guffawing at how easily the man had been distracted long enough for Nya to sneak up from behind and bludgeon him on the back of the head.

"It's weird," Nya murmured as she tossed the branch she had just used into the nearby briar. "I didn't think that was going to work, either."

"Only because I did such a good job at pissing him off," Sam gloated.

"Well," Nya smiled secretly, "it _is_ what you do best, Sam."

Rolling his eyes, but captivated all the same at his wife's resourcefulness, Sam offered his arm to Nya, which she teasingly took—the gesture that it was all clear for the two to proceed as a unit of their own, towards where the action was.

Breathing shallowly behind them, the knocked out guard continued to face the soupy gray sky where he lay, snowdrops melting upon his cooling face.

* * *

The whippets of ice streaked across the windshield of the two Lynx trucks as they burst onto the scene within the Tiergarten just after crossing a bridge south of the park that spanned a small canal. A few Chimera vehicles were still hot on their heels, but the combined small-arms fire that emanated from the rear accesses, arguably from the best soldiers the galaxy had ever seen, were doing an admirable job at keeping them at bay.

One such Hammerhead lurched downward sharply after one of its hoverjets was blown out by this concentrated zone of fire. Leaving a sea of sparks behind as it agonizingly skidded on the road, the broken-down vehicle finally caught on a partially-opened manhole and the great force of its inertia caused it to pitch violently forward, embarking into a deadly cartwheel that hurtled parts off of its frame at an alarming rate.

"Was that the last of them?" Liara called as she continued to grip the steering wheel of her vehicle so tightly that blood flow to her fingers was nearly cut off. Next to her, Shepard was silently reloading his rifle, a grim look on his face.

" _No…_ " Miranda reported. " _They're holding back now. It's like… wait. A single rider is approaching our column. Custom bike. Large profile_."

A tired expression overcame Shepard as he racked the slide of his rifle. "It's him," he hoarsely got out.

Roahn's glance up at her father confirmed her worst fears imaginable.

Less than a tenth of a mile away, the Tomahawk custom cycle roared into view, swerving its way between the wealth of Chimera minions, its massive rider sitting atop the brushed aluminum frame, all oculi lined up in an array reminiscent of an inferno and death. Snow and melted ice spat from beyond the rear tires as the Tomahawk surged ahead, closing the gap between the Legionnaire and his prey with an alarming efficiency.

Metallic fingers were like ice as they gripped the handlebars. The Legionnaire's synthesized breathing noises were muted by the wind slicing at him as he rode, oblivious to the cold. Tiny adjustments to the throttle and brake teased his approach while targeting software was already picking out potential avenues of attack as he neared firing distance of the first Lynx.

Soldiers to the end, the occupants in the bed of the rearward Lynx—James, Miranda, and Jack—all opened fire on the Legionnaire the instant he came into range. Bullets pinged off the armor of the Tomahawk and the shields of the Legionnaire sparked furiously but were nowhere near the point of breaking. The enormous cyborg began to maneuver his cycle in a serpentine manner, looking to draw some of the fire and to evade it, if possible.

Slots upon the Legionnaire's shoulder pads opened up and two miniaturized rocket launchers unfolded and began pinpointing targets courtesy of the Legionnaire's automatic laser guidance system. With a series of whooshes and searing combustion of gases, several rockets were expelled from the launchers, spiraling high in the sky as they headed on course for the two Lynxes.

The trucks were rocked hard by the detonations and everyone who was fighting outside had to duck lest they get a piece of shrapnel in the head for their trouble. Tiny flowers of pressure and fire zapped into existence for a mere microsecond before the explosions had a chance to take effect. Temporarily deafened, everyone fighting at the rear of Grunt's Lynx was, for the moment, discombobulated, unable to mount a resistance for precious few seconds.

The distraction that the micro-rockets had offered allowed the Legionnaire to pass the Lynx that Grunt was driving and to come up alongside Shepard's vehicle. Utterly silent, the Legionnaire fixated his vision upon Shepard's passenger side door, which is where the human was laying out suppressive fire in the Legionnaire's direction, hoping to knock the monster off. The attacks were useless and the Legionnaire made a controlled gesture towards the rack slotted behind him, causing the automatic shotgun mounted upon his back to flip up and forward into position, neatly inserting the grip into his palm. The shotgun's magnetic tubing found the requisite ports in the Legionnaire's chassis, beginning the process of effective heat dispersion.

"Just like before, Shepard," the Legionnaire croaked out, his voice carrying through the stale air even at this speed.

"Not this time, you bastard," Shepard retorted, mainly to himself, but he had to pull back into the cabin because the Legionnaire had depressed the trigger of his shotgun and was now spraying the Lynx at full blast.

Slugs of such great diameter slammed into the truck, enormous explosions peppering the outside as the gun fired ad infinitum. One such shot clipped the corner of the Lynx and punctured the front windshield _from the back_ , splintering it, and leaving a saucer-sized hole behind in the process.

Liara flinched from the report, her vision now partially impeded now that half the windshield was ruined. Instinctively, she threw an arm over Roahn for protection as they now approached the iconic roundabout in the middle of the Tiergarten, a circle of concrete that ringed around an impressively tall statue that was topped with a bronze sculpture of the goddess Victoria. Hanging a right, the back of the Lynx briefly skidded out of alignment before Liara could get everything under control while the occupants lurched around from the change in direction.

Now the column was screaming down the elongated boulevard that led straight towards the Brandenburg Gate. The Legionnaire was adjusting his aim all the while, punching great dents into the Lynx as he kept up the pressure, his shotgun singing war cries.

Garrus tried to lean over the side of the moving truck to get a shot at the Legionnaire but the cyborg simply shifted the gun and fired a burst almost lazily in the turian's direction. Garrus ducked the blast, which had narrowly missed the crest of his head, breathing hard in the face of such willful malevolence.

"Liara," he bellowed into the comm. "Knock this guy off his bike!"

The asari did not respond verbally out of sheer panic, but made it known that she had received the instruction when she veered the Lynx sharply to the side, looking to ram the Legionnaire off the road. The cyborg braked just in time, narrowly missing the tail end of the Lynx that whipped around from the sudden deceleration. The Tomahawk bike shot to and fro, as if the Legionnaire could not decide which side of the truck to assault next before making another attempt on the left side, maneuvering his shotgun into a firing position once more.

Shepard was not going to be treated so callously for so long. Just as the Legionnaire began to run alongside Shepard's door, the human abruptly poked his torso out, rifle at the ready, and unleashed a solid five-round burst towards the cyborg.

The bullets missed the Legionnaire entirely, trails of heat blurring by the impassive frame of the cyborg as they shot on by.

 _How pitiful,_ the Legionnaire thought.

The Legionnaire did not realize at first what Shepard had been aiming at and assumed that the man had made the stupid mistake of taking a shot at point-blank range and had improbably missed in the process. The Legionnaire allowed a nanosecond to scoff at Shepard's incompetence—the commander's aim was on par with the average Chimera trooper, evidentially!

But when the Legionnaire finally depressed the trigger of his shotgun, there was the immediate sensation that something was amiss. Slugs were being forced out of the weapon as normal, but the handling of the shotgun felt different somehow. It felt… rawer. Wilder. Almost as if it was becoming harder to control with each detonation and expulsion of every projectile.

The Legionnaire glanced down and was rather surprised and incensed to see that the barrel of the automatic shotgun was glowing red hot. Heat was wisping from the weapon in manipulative and hazy waves while snow hissed and dribbled off of the scalding hot barrel.

That was when the Legionnaire saw the root of the problem.

The heat dispersal tubes—responsible for transferring the residual heat from the shotgun to be rerouted and ultimately circulated throughout the Legionnaire's chassis—were severed, sheared away by the looks of it. Shepard had not missed after all. In fact, the human's aim had been so precise that he had managed to hit a tube about the thickness of a human's wrist while on a moving vehicle in such adverse conditions.

The shotgun then bucked as a piece of its internal mechanism abruptly imploded, cracked from the stress of the heat. Then another part detonated. And another. And another. Without a way for the shotgun to get rid of the heat it generated when firing (as it contained no thermal clips) the weapon itself was disintegrating in the Legionnaire's hands.

Seeing as the gun was falling apart as the seconds ticked on by, the Legionnaire threw the remains of the weapon away with a callous gesture, letting the shotgun clatter and explode on the road behind him.

"Very intriguing," the Legionnaire murmured admirably, but the surprises were not ending there yet.

In his haste to rid himself of the malfunctioning shotgun, the Legionnaire had not been monitoring the speed at which he had been traveling upon his Tomahawk. While Shepard's Lynx was pulling away, Grunt's vehicle was swiftly closing the gap.

Looking up from the control gauges, the Legionnaire was offered a brief moment to ascertain the rapid pace at which the tables had turned an instant before Grunt's Lynx smashed clean upon the back of the Tomahawk. The cyborg jolted and the motorcycle was momentarily propelled forward but the krogan kept on accelerating, hitting the Legionnaire one more time, successfully dislodging the metallic man from his seat.

The Lynx was subject to several bumps and rises as it ran over both the cycle and its rider, destroying the former beyond any hope of repair. Leaving a trail of strewn parts in his wake, Grunt roared in triumph as he continued to speed away.

* * *

For a moment there was static. Warm, red fuzz momentarily seeped across his vision before a local software reboot initiated. Various processes in his heads-up-display darkened but gradually began to come back on again, each one showing no signs of malfunction anymore.

Abruptly, the Legionnaire sat back up from where he had been dumped onto the road, the remains of the Tomahawk laying everywhere and all around him. The ground was slick and wet, snow continuing to melt upon the ground as it touched the warmer surface. The cyborg gave a frustrated grunt and moved to stand, the hydraulics in his legs emitting vague groans in the process.

Internal sensors were showing signs of damage. A cracked faceplate and some dents to his central cavity had been garnered, most likely when the Lynx had run him over. Such trifles were quickly disregarded as the Legionnaire held Shepard's departing convoy in his sights. A tightness enveloped his senses. His mind ran flat as he pictured the image of his prey solely in his head. An animalistic noise came from his vocabulator as he beheld his destiny leaving his sight.

A soft noise from behind finally shattered his line of concentration. In the middle of the road, the Legionnaire turned around, the black and gray armored behemoth capturing fire in his gaze as he hissed out his searing breath.

A civilian in a Renault Raccoon had rolled to a stop upon witnessing the rather unconventional conflict that had been tearing through the Tiergarten, her expression one of mild concern that quickly graduated to fear once she had realized the breadth of the Legionnaire's presence. The Legionnaire was a practical individual and did not particularly view himself as a force for evil, but logic did dictate that he needed a vehicle to continue his pursuit of Shepard and since his Tomahawk was no longer functional…

The pistol from the hidden holster snapped into the Legionnaire's hand in a flat blur and the cyborg only pulled the trigger once. The cracking sound of the pistol being fired echoed dully in the frosty air of the park and the cyborg began to stagger over to his newest acquisition. He forcefully wrenched the door to the Raccoon open and rudely deposited the dead woman onto the ground. Blood leaked from the round hole in her head and her dead eyes gazed at nothing as she too became blanketed with snow.

Barely squeezing himself into the driver's seat, the Legionnaire did not spare his victim a sorrowful glance as he took off in pursuit, the wailing of the wheels sending up an icy gale of frozen water as it tore down the road.

Peace soon returned to that section of the park. Crumpled on the ground, the dead woman lay alone upon the frigid road.

The cold greedily ate away the last remnants of warmth.

* * *

" _He's coming back around!_ " Kasumi shouted on all channels, creating a momentary crackle of distortion as the feedback ripped through the speakers.

Shepard leaned over to peer at the side mirror and sure enough, he caught a glimpse of the rounded form of a Renault Raccoon—a bulbous and stout SUV—making its way back towards the convoy. The orange oculi of its driver were impossible to miss, even from this distance and through a windshield.

" _He just can't take a hint, can he?_ " Garrus similarly drawled as he unleashed a frustrated sigh immediately afterward.

There was no time to dawdle or reflect any more upon the meaning of life in the brief absence of violence for the Legionnaire had just about caught up to them again, now brandishing a heavy pistol in the interior of the car he was driving. Right off the bat, the cyborg partially leaned out of the driver's side window and began plugging away once more at the trucks, picking up where he had left off before he had been unceremoniously run over.

Shepard yanked his head backwards before one of the Legionnaire's bullets hit the side mirror he had been glancing out of, disintegrating it and causing a splash of vaporized glass to dust all over him. For god's sake, that cyborg had an uncannily scary aim!

The Raccoon that the Legionnaire was driving, however, was not as maneuverable as the Tomahawk motorcycle he had been atop of in the beginning and so he was having a more difficult time trying to skirt around Grunt's vehicle to get to Shepard's. As far as he was concerned, the Legionnaire did not care a whiff about the occupants of the first vehicle, he just wanted to get to the human up front, except that the krogan at the wheel was making things mightily difficult for him. The Raccoon weaved across all six lanes of traffic but the cyborg was thwarted at every turn by Grunt when trying to make his pass, much to the driver's immense frustration.

Emphasizing his annoyance, the Legionnaire turned his arm upon the rear wheels on the left side of Grunt's truck. Firing indiscriminately through his own windshield (blowing it out in the process) the Legionnaire punctured the four tires with an explosion of rubber and pressurized nitrogen. The Lynx, its weight now off balance, swerved heavily to the left, giving the Legionnaire an opening on the right to proceed.

The twin-turbocharged engine of the Raccoon hissed ominously as it accelerated, but Grunt was not giving up so easily. At the wheel, the krogan gave a roar as he tried to get his vehicle back on track, yanking it to the right in a savage maneuver. The Legionnaire, caught up in his efforts to make it back to Shepard, could only stare as Grunt's Lynx was once more onrushing him towards a fatalistic collision. The smaller Raccoon jolted heavily as the corner of the Lynx impacted against the driver's side door, puncturing the aluminum frame and ripping it off its hinges, exposing the occupant. Sleet and snow filtered in, soaking the Legionnaire, who yowled in his rage.

The door-less Raccoon wobbled heavily, nearly losing its grip completely after hitting several ice patches, but the Legionnaire wrested control of the car before the oversteer could overtake him. Leaving the floundering Grunt in his wake, the Legionnaire met up with the lead Lynx…

…only to be subject to the whipping motion of its back end as Liara made to cut him off.

Shepard had an obscured view from his position, but he heard a terrific sound of glass shattering and metal crumpling and he dared to look behind him to see the red Raccoon flipping end over end behind him, vaulting over sidewalks and hedgerows to land upside-down, a smoking wreck.

"Did you get him?" Shepard called over to Liara, momentarily taking his eyes off the road.

With a hellish roar, a shining limb unexpectedly wrapped in through the window and chilling fingers fastened themselves to Shepard's neck. The maw of the Legionnaire then leaned in through the gap, his vacant expression causing Roahn to scream and Liara to briefly become agape with horror.

"Not yet, _commander_ ," the monster whispered as he increased his grip, metallic tendons whirring in protest.

Shepard mouthed a word.

The human's free hand then splayed open as his omni-tool momentarily became aglow around his palm. In an instant, he touched his hand to the Legionnaire's wrist and the cyborg screamed out as a bolt of electricity arced out from the tool and was sent searing directly into the armored chassis. To the Legionnaire, it felt like his brain had just been set on fire and his organs were dissolving from the sudden and intense pain. Micro-spasms ensued and the cyborg jerked away, desperate to rid himself of the agonizing suffering, releasing a gagging Shepard and ripping the door off of the Lynx in the process.

Shepard rubbed his throat, recovering quickly, as he managed a savage grimace and whipped up his rifle to fire a burst into the Legionnaire's face. Sparks ripped through the vacant air, flaring luminously upon the metallic being's shields and armor. The Legionnaire surged backwards along the side of the Lynx, using the railings and his magnetic soles to keep himself situated properly. The cyborg's pistol, having been dropped in the chaos, bounced upon the ground and fell to a stop lamely before being crushed underneath the tires of the Lynx.

Growling to himself, Shepard now veered himself out of the door, holding onto one of the interior handles while he kept his feet firmly planted on the outside skids of the Lynx. In the other hand, he still held his rifle and he quickly brought the weapon to his hip and laid off a series of rounds towards the Legionnaire, who was still clinging to the side of the truck, same as Shepard, just a few feet away.

At point-blank range, there was no way for Shepard to miss. The Legionnaire's shields furiously bubbled and spat as the pressure mounted upon them. They distorted and broke with a fierce _snap-hiss!_ That was when Shepard unleashed a concussive round from his rifle, which caught the cyborg on the shoulder and blew off the armor plating there. Chunks of metal sprayed the ground and smoke billowed from the "wound." The Legionnaire stumbled backwards a bit but did not fall off the Lynx, staring in astonishment at the damage that Shepard had managed to rack up on him in just a few short seconds.

" _Hell_ ," the Legionnaire uttered.

The automaton now seemed to realize that his advantage had shrunk precariously in the past few minutes. This was no longer the washed-up human he had humiliated time and again. This was a whole different beast.

Time to switch things up.

The Legionnaire placed his palms flat upon the side of the Lynx, activating his magnetic points at those locations. Scurrying like a spider, the Legionnaire crab-walked up the truck until he had made it to the roof—a far quicker effort than any organic could hope to replicate.

Shepard continued to shoot at the cyborg, but his foe simply produced a wide shield that sprouted in a flash from his omni-tool, temporarily deflecting the bullets with ease as they vaporized against the auburn hard light face. The Legionnaire used that amount of time to produce yet _another_ hand cannon that he used to open fire upon Shepard, blowing holes in the ceiling of the Lynx as the human was forced to take cover. Bending his knees in a combat stance, the Legionnaire fired one-handed at Shepard, the gun throwing away spent thermal clips almost once a second for the metal creature was pulling the trigger faster than the human could perceive.

Deactivating his omni-shield for a brief second, the Legionnaire twisted his wrist and a miniature missile protruded out from a launcher embedded in the cyborg's arm. Shepard, immediately identifying the danger, shifted his aim to bear upon the launcher. Flaring scintilla shot up around the Legionnaire's arm, the force of Shepard's bullets driving the limb down a few inches, successfully shifting the aim away from him as the monster fired.

The projectile shot forward a few feet and hit the roof of the Lynx, the resulting eruption nearly blowing out Shepard's ears and burning his face. The force from the shockwave was enough for him to lose his grip on the outside handle and, to his horror, he began to pitch backwards off the truck, towards the road.

Time diluted as his brain became saturated with adrenaline. Shepard felt at peace as he fell, practically calm as he watched the exterior of the Lynx fall away from him. If he was to die this way, then it would not be so bad.

But someone unexpectedly reached out and grabbed his wrist, keeping him in place. Startled, Shepard tilted his head up, his body lying nearly parallel to the road as he was held like this.

His eyes widened as he found the person who had saved him.

" _Hold on, John!_ " Tali screamed, her beautiful purple _sehni_ whipping in the wind. Her three fingers latching onto his wrist felt like iron. Water beaded on her black enviro-suit and dripped off her purple mask as she locked eyes with him, carrying such wonder in her expression.

Somehow, Shepard knew that things were going to be okay.

His eyes then regained their focus after he blinked for a bit and then Shepard finally allowed color to seep back into his vision.

" _Hold on, dad!_ " Roahn screamed, the girl replacing her mother in the here and now. The child grunted as her father's heavier body was slowly driving her towards the edge of the front cabin, but she refused to let go of her father, no matter how badly her shoulders were straining in their sockets. Roahn shut her eyes, the blue partition of her helmet now emitting no more of her light. She cried out as she yanked hard on Shepard's arm, desperately trying to pull him back up.

 _Roahn_.

Clarity returning in an awesome wave, Shepard leaned forward and grasped the side of the truck, righting himself in an instant. Roahn fell back onto the seat, groaning, but relieved.

Torn as he watched his frightened daughter catch her breath back, Shepard felt an unspeakable anger take hold of his very soul. For all the hurt that he had put Roahn through, for all the unfair things that had happened to his girl in her life, this had to end. For her sake, this _had to end_.

In the midst of the lull in the firing—when the Legionnaire had finally run out of thermal clips to use—a fighting-mad Shepard poked his head back out, after he had commanded micro-syringes in his armor to allow him a tiny burst of adrenaline, and sent another concussive burst flying straight at his enemy. The projectile slammed against the Legionnaire's left shin and cracked the plating there, creating a micro-shockwave that billowed snow and water in all directions. Temporarily unbalanced, the Legionnaire sank to his feet, but with a terrifying scream of denial, an anodized nano-blade materialized from a slit near the cyborg's wrist, faintly glowing red near the edges. The blade now fully revealed, the Legionnaire slashed at Shepard, cutting a thin line down the armor of the Lynx as Shepard had to lean back to narrowly avoid the blow.

 _This bastard's insane_ , Shepard thought.

"We're almost there!" Liara cried, and Shepard whirled to face forwards as the massive edifice of the Reichstag came into view beyond a partition of trees.

Between them and the building was an ocean of color, a literal horde of faces and voices all waving together beautifully crafted signs as they chanted in a spectrum of languages. The protestors were cordoned off by a light blockade of Chimera police cruisers and fortunately the road leading up to the Reichstag was clear, so that was the route that seemed natural for Liara to take. The massive Lynx seemed to groan as the wheels cranked to the right ever so slightly putting the truck on course for the building's entrance.

There was still the matter of the Legionnaire, however.

A sequence of thuds in rapid fashion just directly overhead indicated that the cyborg was now milling about on the roof of the front cabin. That was confirmed when a jet-black blade unexpectedly speared its way down, puncturing the roof with a hideous shriek. The blade actually went as far as to poke a hole in the armrest of Shepard's seat, causing a poof of stuffing to poke out.

"Shepard!" the Legionnaire roared from above.

"Yeah, I'm here," Shepard grimaced.

Something was tugging at his arm and he looked down to find Roahn offering a large yellow shotgun for him, taken from the rear arsenal. "Use this, dad," she said, her eyes wide and pleading.

Immediately Shepard swapped his weapons and gave his daughter an affectionate pat on the head. "Good girl," he praised. "Cover your ears."

Roahn scarcely had a moment to spare from the time she deactivated her auditory sensors to the moment when her father opened fire directly into the ceiling, creating a choking haze of smoke to filter about the cabin. Intentionally deaf, Roahn could only watch as Shepard calmly displaced a volley after volley into the roof, the weapon savagely bucking in his hands, spitting flame in a savage inferno. She studied her father's face. Despite the overwhelming noise, Shepard did not flinch once. His jaw was set. His eyes were locked up top. He was fearless, for the emotion had found terror in residing within his body.

Now he could demonstrate where his true self had been hiding for all those years.

The roof of the Lynx had been turned into Swiss cheese by now and at least Shepard was able to see through the holes that the Legionnaire was nowhere in sight. He must have blown him off with one of the bursts a while back.

"Slow down," he told Liara as they neared the steps of the Reichstag. Their truck had to shunt a few police cruisers aside to make it to the road in front of the building—a small price to pay considering the amount damage accumulated so far.

The crowd thrummed with energy as they moved forward for a closer look. Eager cries sporadically erupted as random individuals began to recognize the people exiting from both Lynx, becoming more and more ecstatic as they perceived their idols standing in their midst. The crowd ignored the thundering of gunships and the distant wail of sirens. All they could see was the Normandy crew in all their glory. Their heroes had returned to Earth.

Shepard disregarded the cacophony from the mass of people as he first moved to examine his daughter. "You all right?" he asked her.

Roahn coughed but gave him a thumbs up.

He gave her another pat upon the back of Roahn's hand. "She would be proud of you today," Shepard assured the girl. Roahn's eyes lidded upward in a soft smile of relief—a gesture that Shepard returned wholeheartedly. After patting his daughter's hand one last time, he spoke into his omni-tool to address the team. "I want this to get done as quickly as possible. We're going to need two sweep teams to find—"

All sound in the nearby vicinity seemed to inexplicitly dampen as though a void had infiltrated Shepard's eardrums. Something was terribly wrong. The hair on the back of his neck was sticking up and his joints were aching as massive amounts of warning chemicals were dumped into his bloodstream.

 _Danger_.

From a gap between the cabin and the main body of the Lynx, the gigantic figure of the Legionnaire had burst out of hiding, searing a path through the drifting snow as he flipped through the air. The steel-gray granite steps leading to the Reichstag cracked like glass as the Legionnaire landed upon them in a kneeling pose, steam wafting from the damaged chassis. There was a cantankerous clanking noise followed by a wretched series of whirs and drilling noises as the cyborg stood up to his full height, towering over everyone in sight. Some people screamed at the sight of the monstrosity. Others, like Shepard, were frozen in place out of some nameless fear.

The Legionnaire shunted his arms downward, bringing out his nano-blades to their full length. Angled diagonally downward, the tips of the swords nearly brushed the ground as sparks dribbled from the slots in the Legionnaire's armor. Tilting his head upward, the cyborg vibrated with a thrumming laugh—a noise that encapsulated malevolence and damnation in its purest form. Standing between Shepard and the Reichstag, the cyborg beheld the congregation before him, captivated by the terror he brought to the masses as he stood over them.

"We're… _not done yet_ ," the Legionnaire seethed as his optics narrowed. "Your victory has not been attained yet, Shepard! No matter how this ends, _I will be complete!_ "

Chips of stone sprayed in a deadly arc as metal and glass moved as one, shredding precious flakes of snow from the fine hail.

In the freezing air, silence reigned supreme.

* * *

 **A/N: I was skeptical if I would have enough material to release this chapter in two parts instead of keeping it a single chapter like it was in my outline. I guess now I know. Funny how things work out that way, isn't it?**

 **By the way, after I had submitted the last chapter two weeks ago, you guys helped push _Cenotaph_ over 10,000 views and over 100 reviews at about the same time! You did it! Look, when I start a story, I have no idea how people are genuinely going to respond to it. I don't write to chase a trend or to reuse old storylines that other authors have done first (and possibly better). I write because I want to share the ideas that I come up with and... it's hard to put into words just how happy you all have made me with your support and interest in _Cenotaph_. Maybe it's the holiday season making this gruff curmudgeon of an author a little more emotional than normal, but I'm just glad that I've been able to share this journey with you and that I get to add something to the wonderful universe of _Mass Effect_. All of you, give yourselves a pat on the back, because you don't get enough credit. It's the audience that has helped make _Cenotaph_ what it is. I just put words on a page but you give them meaning.**

 **When the end of _Cenotaph_ rolls around, I hope to see you there.**

 **(On a potentially disappointing note: the upcoming winter holidays will most likely delay the next chapter by a couple days. I need to relax too, you know? I know it seems cruel of me to announce such a thing after the above cliffhanger, but rest assured that it'll all be worth it in the end.)**

 **(A little piece of trivia: the Tomahawk and the Raccoon are actually real vehicles, but never made it past the concept stages and thus were never released to the public. They just looked futuristic enough that I felt that I could include them in this story.)**

 **Playlist :**

 **Tempelhofer Infiltration: "Exfiltrate the Hotzone" by Ludvig Forssell from the video game _Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain_**

 **Sniper/Onwards to the Reichstag: "Camp Omega" by Ludvig Forssell from the video game _Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes_**

 **Chimera Battle Montage: "Guitar Suite" by Hans Zimmer and Bryce Jacobs from the film _Rush (The Complete Score Album)_**

 **Legionnaire Boards Tomahawk/Tomahawk Chase: "The Prowler" by Daniel Pemberton from the film _Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse_**

 **Legionnaire Commandeers Raccoon: "Nurburgring 1976 (insert)" by Hans Zimmer and Lorne Balfe from the film _Rush (The Complete Score Album)_**

 **Legionnaire on the Truck/Shepard Trades Punches: "Alpha Ceph Theme" by Borislov Slavov from the video game _Crysis 3_**

 **The Final Battle Begins: "Entombed (Cinematic - Unreleased Track)" by Neal Acree from the video game _StarCraft II: L_** _ **egacy of the Void**_


	22. Chapter 22: Reichstag Pt II

**EMERGENCY ALERT SYSTEM**

GERMANY AUTHORITY BROADCAST

LOCAL UPRISING ALERT FOR:

BERLIN AREA (DOWNTOWN)

THE ALLIANCE HAS ISSUED A WARNING FOR DISORDERLY CONDUCT IN ADDITION TO VIOLENT ACTS OF TERROR. MAPS OF AREAS TO AVOID HAVE BEEN SENT TO ALL OMNI-TOOLS. THIS WARNING IS EFFECTIVE IMMEDIATELY AND WILL CONTINUE UNTIL THE ALLIANCE SENDS OUT THE ALL-CLEAR.

CITIZENS ARE STRONGLY ADVISED TO AVOID THE FOLLOWING AREAS:

\- TEMPELHOF

\- SCHÖNEBERG

\- TIERGARTEN

DO NOT APPROACH. DO NOT INTERVENE.

YOUR SAFETY IS OUR PRIORITY.

CONTROL WILL RETURN IN SHORT ORDER.

THE TIME IS 10:22 AM.

* * *

The overcast sky blotted out the sun overhead, but the light from the celestial body diffused through the mist of vapor and ice regardless, widening in a conical fashion that exhibited a warm glow through the sleet. Individual drops of snow became black as they were silhouetted against the light, slashing ribbons through the frosty cold that draped over the city.

A large figure joined the scything precipitation, eyes momentarily blinking orange as stone dust from its launch upward trailed just below its feet while the shape sailed through the airs. The shadow's fingers curved, claw-like, sharp swords protruding from its wrists. A frightful bellow filled the space between the snowflakes, shockwaves so powerful they managed to influence the direction of stray molecules in the air.

The Legionnaire tucked in, jets on the soles of his feet flaring to orient himself perfectly. Like a missile, he shot down to earth feet-first. His prey waited below.

Shepard tracked the cyborg's leap and managed to dive out of the way just scant seconds before his foe landed. The heavy mechanoid dropped onto the thick stone walkway heavily, a seismic wave being thrown up from the weight of his arrival, which threatened to throw Shepard off his feet.

Powdered snow rippled and exploded in a gentle cloud around the Legionnaire, dusting him with white. Mechanical whirring and clanking noises erupted as the operative stood to his full height, an obelisk against the storm.

"And now," the cyborg whispered, "my task is nearly accomplished."

The Legionnaire then uttered a short growl as he turned towards the nearby human, not wasting any time in targeting Shepard—half a dozen arming locks had all managed to center themselves upon Shepard's body, keeping his line of sight centered. Fluidly, the cyborg stepped forth and brutally slashed at the commander with his nano-blades, the arcs managing to part air and falling snowflakes as the masterfully-crafted scimitars seemingly warped space and time in their wake as they trailed on by, leaving ribbons of vacuums detonating in micro-explosions as the displaced air crashed back together.

The blades passed centimeters from Shepard's body and a brief wash of wind fluttered against him from the sheer force of the Legionnaire's blow. Rifle in hand, Shepard snapped the weapon off and began holding down the trigger on full auto, levelling a punishing salvo upon the cyborg—yellow armor-piercing rounds spat in a trajectory of only a few feet, smashing themselves upon the Legionnaire's shields. The metal foe threw up a hand on instinct to ward off the bullets, his barriers already straining close to breaking completely. The hexagonal blue coating around the Legionnaire that warped in and out of existence as the bullets vaporized themselves upon it sizzled and cooked, ripples streaming out in all directions as the harsh tang of ozone came to the senses.

Roaring again, the Legionnaire straightened up and began to stride forward as Shepard cautiously backed up—still firing—and both individuals were now angling slightly up the shallow steps of the Reichstag, towards the glass entrance. The cyborg whirled and stabbed, intending to catch Shepard with his blades, but Shepard kept leaping away at the last moment, giving himself ample room to maneuver.

Warbling heavily, the Legionnaire then paused in his attacks at the same time that Shepard ejected a thermal clip. The oculi upon the monster narrowed and the cyborg's next step forward was almost tentative, uncharacteristically cautious. Shepard, after slotting in the next clip, paused as well, laying off his assault in momentary confusion.

"You know that you're on borrowed time," the Legionnaire taunted nastily as Shepard's aghast face stiffened grimly. "You can't dodge my attacks forever, Shepard. You'll tire, as all organics do. You'll be worn out—"

The timeline that the Legionnaire was about to verbally recount to Shepard in his vapid attempt to demoralize the commander was suddenly cut short as there was the snarling bellow of a fuel cell engine and a thick dark blur rapidly passed within a few feet of Shepard's face. A heavy object then _slammed_ into the Legionnaire and promptly ran the operative over once more—the culprit being the second Lynx vehicle with a raucous krogan at the wheel, who had been laughing all the while as he had demonstrated what 3400 horsepower could pull off.

A few pieces of armor—knocked clean off the Legionnaire—clattered to the ground in front of Shepard. The commander blinked in surprise, stunned to the point of being stiff even after Grunt jumped out of the Lynx, a scratched and chipped war hammer ready to go in his massive hands.

"I don't think he was expecting _that_ ," the krogan grinned.

"It does not appear that way," Shepard agreed, now becoming a little distracted by the thrum of the protestors behind him. More agitation was also approaching from the front of the Reichstag, where Shepard could now see several squads of Chimera troopers in their red-and-black bulky armor head over to his position, weapons at the ready. He instinctively looked back at the crowd behind him, back at the multiracial throng that cheered and gasped all as one, like an audience all watching the same film in the theater. So many warnings were passing through his head that Shepard was momentarily dizzy from the amount of factors he needed to take into account here.

But that all passed when he took a long blink, breathed in and out, and focused on the things most important in his life.

He was Commander Shepard. He could handle this.

"Garrus," Shepard's eyes snapped open as steel crept into his voice.

"Yes, boss?" the turian leaped out from the Lynx, no sarcasm at all inhibiting his words. Garrus only called Shepard "boss" whenever he was looking to him for guidance, to be at his most deferential and most respectful. Truly, he was the best ally one could ask for.

"What are your odds on getting all these people to safety? This is probably going to get rather ugly."

Garrus took a quick glance behind him, taking into account the anti-PMC sentiment some of the more vocal participants were hollering at the top of their lungs. The crowd throbbed against the barrier of police keeping them at bay, eager to storm the building alongside their heroes.

"Not very good, I'd say," Garrus said honestly. "They're not going to want to leave. Not after seeing us here."

Shepard nodded, somewhat expecting such an answer. "And I'm not really sure that they'll evacuate even if we ask them nicely. No point in such an impossible task, Garrus. I'll only ask one last thing of you for today."

"What?"

"Look after Roahn."

Garrus had to suppress a sigh as he tried not to catch the glowing eyes of the frightened girl who had just now poked her head out from the cabin of the Lynx vehicle. "Shepard, you're not suggesting…"

The human then gave a jovial laugh, his face brightening for a split-second, which was the most intense swell of emotion Garrus had seen from the man in years. "You think I'm _that_ pessimistic? No, my dear friend, I just want you to keep an eye on my family for the moment. Trust me, I have no plans on dying today."

" _Spirits_ ," Garrus wilted in blissful relief. "I thought that you were going to do something so stupid that you would get killed right at the outset. You don't _get_ to do another suicide mission, you know."

"Come on, Garrus," Shepard mustered a tight smirk as he lifted his rifle at the same time. "You really think that I'm doing this all for myself?"

Leaving the turian no time to answer, Shepard whirled about on his heel, digging the armored soles of his boots onto the slick steps of the government building as he pushed off with his powerful legs and shot his way towards the doors. The Chimera troopers all shouted out in tandem as they saw the dark armored figure approaching in a charge, but they had already lost the element of control of this fight, even though they did not know it.

Shepard had the edge here.

" _Dad!_ " he heard Roahn call out behind him, but he took that distraction, crumpled it up, and fed it to his determined soul.

 _She's the only thing that I have left worth fighting for._

All his doubts, his fears, and his worries had been stowed to a safe place in the back of his mind. His actions now were fulfilling a new purpose—the safety of not just his friends, but his beloved Roahn. He could only hope that after today, Roahn would be able to see that his love was not spun from idle words or by some flimsy strand of sentiment under the veneer of a familial bond. Today, he could finally prove that he was the father she had deserved all this time. He could keep his mistakes latched to his persona, bare them for all to see, but by god, he would make it known that his girl had a father that cared so deeply for her.

The immutable nature of heaven and earth would be summarily broken, their unyielding nature shown to be a farce as it would be proved that both ideals, no matter how steadfast, could be moved.

* * *

"Hey!" Miranda heard Jack yell out and she whirled to face the tattooed ex-convict. "Where the hell's _he_ going?"

Jack had thrown out an arm pointing at something towards the front of the Reichstag, and Miranda tracked the direction of her cohort's finger to land her gaze upon the man in N7 armor sprinting up the steps on a direct course to the Chimera forces who were already laying down fire that popped through the air in crackling bursts. Even at this distance, Miranda could see the impressively armored man's shields fizzle and snap, continuing to hold despite the punishing onslaught directed at him.

"Shepard's taking them all on at once!" she yelled out, feeling that she had to state the obvious for those in the vicinity who had not been paying attention.

"Without us?" Jack reared her head back. "Fuck that!"

The inked biotic proceeded to vault over the edge of the Lynx she had still been perched on, a cool purple aura gently easing her down to the ground before she took off in pursuit of her commander, eager to bolster his rank. Her fists glowed with energy, pulsating with invisible forces that pushed all descending snowflakes away from her body. Ice upon the concrete ground melted wherever she stepped, letting loose quick bursts of steam.

Gawking for a brief moment, Miranda chewed her lip in admiration before she too followed Jack, but not before she made a curt gesture with her head towards Grunt and Kasumi, who had been watching her intently.

"Well?" was all she had to ask.

The three gripped their weapons of choice in their hands, their minds already made up. Gritting her teeth, Miranda led the little squad in storming the Chimera ranks as they nipped at Jack's heels, eager to get in on the action.

As much as Miranda hated to admit it, Jack did have a point. Sometimes, the only response for such a ludicrous situation was to simply declare, "Fuck that."

* * *

The analytical portion of Shepard's mind—which entailed all of his accumulated tactical knowledge he had compiled over his years of service—was overclocking itself as he set to work at storming the enemy's position right at the entrance of the Reichstag. The Chimera troopers had dumbly taken up postings with no cover in place right in front of the supporting pillars, content to simply plug away at Shepard in the hopes of downing him before he made it within range.

Shepard could not rightfully scoff at such tactics. After all, he was charging up a heavily defended front with no cover of his own to utilize. But he had his skills and the determination to back it up.

Muscles and tendons ached after spending so long without being utilized to their fullest extent, but Shepard was swimming in painkillers and his anti-rads to the point where he was nearly numb. Knowing how decisive today would be in defining the rest of his life, Shepard had taken no chances in any illness or atrophy setting upon him and potentially preventing him from achieving success. His lungs opened up and the pores on his skin flared, drinking in the chilling Berlin air. Any aches or pains he could effectively dispel now. The rest was up to him.

The Avenger rifle in his hands quickly rose to level with his right eye. Two bullets jumped from the barrel of the gun, both impacting squarely upon the head of the nearest Chimera trooper, causing it to explode and sending a burst of blood and brains to fountain upon the steps. The warmth of the blood seeped through the piles of snow, creating rivulets and depressions in a dark crimson color. Hot steam from the body wafted upward, creating wobbling ripples of distortion in the air.

With the first trooper's death having created an opening in the enemy's flank, Shepard used the occasion to sprint behind one of the pillars of the entrance, now facing perpendicular to the main entrance while the rest of the troopers continued to fire away at him. Bullets holes plugged the stone column, chipping it and sending vivid and sharp clouds of dust spraying in all directions. The crowd, some ways away, shrieked in response to the shooting, but most held their ground, incredibly awed even in the face of such extreme danger to their own lives.

Shepard made a gesture and a grenade jumped from the holster into his palm, called by electromagnets embedded in the gauntlet of the N7 armor. He primed the explosive and rolled it into the thin corridor between the building and the barrier of pillars—a thin space only three meters wide—an area in which one would be sheltered by the thick roof above before they could completely venture outside into the open space that the Tiergarten provided. Startled shouts erupted from the troopers, most likely stemming from the fact that there was the instinctive and hasty desire to evacuate the blast radius that the grenade threatened to disperse. If the troopers were at all smart, Shepard determined, then their next move would be to move outside, past the row of columns in order to avoid being torn to pieces by the grenade.

That would then give rise to his next move.

The grenade detonated with a punctual but focused _whumpf!_ A void of pressure collapsed and then rapidly expanded in the wake of the device's explosion. A puff of flame wafted into view before it ran out of oxygen in less than a second, extinguishing itself with nary a trace. The detonation caused Shepard's ears to ring and throb painfully, but the sensation lasted for only a few seconds. Nearby windows in the vicinity wobbled before shattering completely, raining the walkways with vicious shards of glass.

The grenade had not injured anybody but it had succeeded in driving the troopers out of cover, which was what Shepard had been hoping for. He had switched the ammo in his gun over in the brief lull and proceeded to lean out from behind the pillar he had appropriated for himself, immediately seeking out a Chimera soldier stumbling around in the open.

A few singular shots rang out and the soldier shrieked as several blue-white bolts hit his legs. The bullets had light penetration so barely any blood spurted out from the wounds, but the infecting projectiles that lodged in the man's knees quickly activated and soon the cryo rounds completely encased the trooper's knees in solid lumps of ice, frozen from the inside out. The trooper dropped his weapon and wobbled back and forth, his balance all shot to hell. Desperate to make a soft landing, the man pitched forward in an attempt to steady himself onto his stomach, but his motions in tilting at such an angle were too great for the strain placed upon his weakened knees.

What happened next was visceral and horrifying to watch.

The cryo rounds had shattered bone, torn muscle, and severed nerves when they had hit the trooper at first. With his knees surrounded by blocky ice chunks, the effect was almost comical in its appearance, but the effect that cryo rounds exuded was that they flash-froze anything that was organic to the point where they were as brittle and as delicate as fine china. So when the unfortunate trooper tried to flop himself on the ground in his forward motion, the act of rocking in a ventral motion snapped his knees in half.

The cracking sound must have been audible from half a mile away.

The trooper started screaming before he hit the ground. Frozen bloody chunks of icy tissue spewed across the ground as the man's legs split at the knee, severing them, and leaving the trooper legless and flopping upon the ground in agony. No blood wept from the stumps of the limbs, for the affected areas had been so thoroughly frozen from the cryo rounds that it was impossible for the blood to melt in these conditions.

Shepard put the man out of his misery with a well-placed bullet to the head a few seconds later, sparing everyone the horror of having to endure such torturous noises.

Another soldier had recovered from the sight of seeing the violent end of his squad mate and embarked into a brazen charge in which blind theatrics was more responsible than valid tactics for this action. Shepard, seeing the man coming from a mile away, simply let loose a concussive blast that hit the charging trooper full on in the chest. Both the man's armor and ribcage caved in with a resounding snapping noise. There was no breath left for the trooper to cry out—he would eventually suffocate right there on the steps of the Reichstag from the multiple punctures to his lungs courtesy of the snapped ribs.

More soldiers were approaching from the north, leaping over the guardrails to make their way into the fray. Shepard's HUD was showing that this next batch of forces were sporting heavy-duty shield generators, so he quickly flipped a switch on his rifle, cycling the ammo into disruptor rounds. A few strategic shots barked from the gun and shattered the shields on the charging mass of bodies. Glowing red flashes of inferno rounds then chewed through the layers of armor adorning the men, melting it into their flesh and boiling them alive. The soldiers flailed and screamed as they burned, acrid smoke rising from their bodies as they collapsed onto the snowy ground—the frozen water hissed as it came into contact with the heated metal, producing a temporary boiling effect.

Pausing to reload for a moment, Shepard kept taking wayward glances back towards where his daughter was and alternately over towards the doors where more reinforcements were continually streaming out from the front. He readied himself to embark on another attack when, all of a sudden, there was a gleaming purple streak and a glowing hemisphere of energy began to emit in the center of a particularly large grouping of troops. The dome of biotic pressured folded inward, diminishing in size for a few seconds before it exploded in all directions. Electricity arced, the cobblestones flexed and warped, and the ground shook beneath Shepard's feet. Chimera soldiers were thrown in all directions, some being deposited a ways away down the steps, while others found their trajectory unceremoniously halted when they were flung into a wall or a pillar. Bones cracked, armor shattered, and many a foe went limp.

From the cynosure where the shockwave had emitted, Jack straightened up, muscles taut, tendons quivering, and she wiped her chin free of snow. The slender woman caught Shepard's eye and gave a quick wink, knowing that nothing else needed to be said. Shepard shot her a smirk in return, grateful for the assistance.

An engineer across the way was in the middle of deploying a turret, but concentrated biotic forces rallied around the man, lifting him up several feet off the ground before slamming down upon the hard surface, snapping his spine. Shepard looked in the direction of the attack to find Miranda coolly apply a warp field to another grouping of soldiers, her determined face set so hard that it might as well have been diamond.

Two more troopers jumped down from the roof, jump jets on their boots flaring to make a soft landing, but were quickly taken out by a few quick submachine gun bursts at close range to the back of their heads. Shepard had thought he had missed the source of the attack, as he had been in the middle of a blink, but he quickly was able to behold a brief shimmer that had emanated between the two soldiers right after they had been killed. The shimmer materialized into a cluster of static and the cloaking field dropped away from Kasumi, who then scampered away to let her tech recharge before she could mount another sneak attack.

At the same time, Grunt was having a ball on the upper side of the park that flanked the Reichstag entrance. The krogan had forgone utilizing a gun to take care of the foes in his way. Instead, he had his war hammer swinging away, clobbering enemy after enemy with the extraordinarily hardened stone that adorned the end of the hammer's thick staff. Body parts and pieces of armor plating sailed into the air as Grunt brought his hammer down again and again thanks to his near limitless supply of energy. The crowd, still watching rapturously, was desensitized to the overall violence present before their eyes, as they continued to cheer the krogan on (which had the effect of energizing Grunt even more) and they still proceeded to supply their heroes with their wordless praise, even after Grunt swung his hammer in a vicious arc and took a man's head off with the weapon.

 _Get inside_ , Shepard mentally drummed within his veil of thoughts. _Larsen's inside_.

A moment was spent for him to spare a valuable glance back towards where his comrades and family were still located. They were all still down near the Lynx, being more conservative in their approach to make it to his position. Shepard stutter-stepped between two of the building's pillars as he remained silhouetted against the cloudy sky. No matter what would happen in the next few minutes, he would be proud of every one of them.

It would do to have their loyalty be rewarded in the end.

* * *

In the ensuing chaos that had transpired in the last minute, everyone's attention had been so firmly fixated upon the mob of Chimera troopers that had been pouring out to engage in intense combat that either no one had been paying attention to what had happened to the Legionnaire after he had been hit by Grunt's Lynx. Another possible answer was that everyone had simply forgotten all about him, assuming that he had been dealt with.

Unfortunately, despite being run over by the same truck twice in the last hour already, the Legionnaire was nowhere close to being finished.

From below the undercarriage of the Lynx, the cyborg had to endure several system restarts after the last impact had completely scrambled his targeting protocols. Apparently he had been hit harder than his combat chassis could take, which was a tad concerning on his end. The Legionnaire was not one to run from a fight, though, and he immediately set to work powering up the hydraulics in his limbs as he mapped out an overlay of the battlefield in a wire-mesh 3D format within his HUD. Enemies showed up as red blips on his sensor, but one particular icon he marked as yellow.

Target number one. Commander Shepard.

Wrenching his head over to the side, all eight optics managed to pinpoint the human standing near the doorway of the Reichstag, moments from making it inside the building. A distorted shriek rose from the Legionnaire as his automated adrenaline dispensers pumped massive amounts of the chemical into his bloodstream. Everything took on a red haze for the Legionnaire and time seemed to distort at a glacial pace while his breathing remained eerily calm.

Pulling back his leg for a massive kick, the large front wheel of the Lynx sheared completely away from the vehicle and bounced several feet into the air as a result of the harsh force exhibited upon its central axis. The Lynx, now tireless on its front left side, wobbled and slightly leaned in that direction, raising the undercarriage upon the right, now allowing the Legionnaire a little more room to maneuver. The operative exploded from underneath the vehicle, his fingers punching holes in the smooth stones as he clawed his way out from there, death and destruction engraining themselves to his will.

His shields flickered as they detected incoming rifle fire from close range. He located the source: Vakarian and the other Alliance exemplars kneeling in strategic positions by their truck. Not wanting them around to distract him from his goal, the Legionnaire stood up and turned to tear the door off of the nearby Lynx. Thick steel squealed uncomfortably as it was bent out of shape, but it eventually could not take the stress and snapped to send the opening into the Legionnaire's hands.

The cyborg wound himself up and tossed the door like a frisbee. The turian and armored humans each gave a yelp as they dove for cover while the spinning door crashed into the side of their own truck milliseconds later, sending shards of safety glass tumbling down upon their heads. The distraction was all the massive agent needed, for any time not spent being engaged with Shepard would only compound the chance that his quarry would be able grow closer to achieving his own objectives. He sprinted up the steps, his large footprints shattering the ground as he stomped forward, the gap separating his prey becoming so much smaller at an alarming rate.

As he raced up towards Shepard, the Legionnaire threw his arms downward, bringing forth the nano-blades embedded within his wrists again. The long swords seemed to hum and quiver with an intransigent energy that occupied the very atoms of the hardened material. Heat and fire blistered from the weapons and the cold fled their presence in hissing bursts.

There was the distinct rush of freezing air before a vacuum quickly consumed it, giving Shepard the sole indication of the presence of danger. He managed to turn his head at the last second, giving him a fleeting moment to glimpse the Legionnaire onrushing him and he quickly ducked into a roll down a couple steps as the first nano-blade slashed just above his head.

The Legionnaire snarled as his feet skidded on the slippery ground, cursing his luck and his target as his first blow had proceeded to miss. Internally, the cyborg was wrestling with the programming blocks set up within his operational software—a theoretical blockade that was continually trying to seize control over his body processes that were all designed to set the Legionnaire solely on his objectives. Clearly the Legionnaire's attacks here were too brutal and were clashing with the "alive-only" orders Larsen had previously set up, but the cyborg had a trick up his sleeve. The operative, allocating some of his processing power to create a snippet of code at the same time he was fighting Shepard, managed to create a program that allowed him to temporarily override Larsen's restrictive command, despite the fact that he had to engage said override every five seconds automatically.

Wheeling around, the Legionnaire dug gouges into the ground as he made to deliver another attack. Shepard had righted himself back up, but had not fully regained his balance yet. As the operative bore down on him, Shepard could think of no other recourse, no other defense at the time, other than to throw up his rifle in a blocking maneuver and hope for the best.

The Legionnaire swung his arm down and the nano-blade crunched as it bit into the casing of the Avenger rifle. Heat bled from the cracks in the barrel and a jet of steam momentarily whistled from the breach. The stronger cyborg wrenched his body, ripping the ruined rifle out of Shepard's hands, leaving the human vulnerable to attack. With his the sword upon his other arm, the Legionnaire wasted no time in sweeping across, fanning his next blade out with the intention of cutting through armor and flesh.

Numb steel met a sizzling orange-red surface. Sparks shuttered and jumped, snapping and seething angrily as cold metal met fire.

The Legionnaire was not one to be caught off guard all that much, but he certainly was now as he beheld the long omni-sword that had quickly materialized out of thin air, strapped to the back of Shepard's wrist. The hard light surface fizzled as its reactive surface extenuated the forces the Legionnaire was exerting on Shepard's body and redirected them back in his direction, enabling Shepard to exhibit an astonishing strength of his own volition.

The omni-sword utilized mass effect fields and hardlight energies to create plates of razor-sharp, blistering hot surfaces of pure light that enabled zones of negative inertia upon striking these bright zones—essentially, anyone using one of these swords could stand up to attacks several times stronger than they would be able to handle and they could manage quite well with such a tool at their disposal.

The plating of his face illuminated by the savage sparks, the Legionnaire looked demonic in the wavering light. "You've upgraded," he growled at Shepard.

"Isn't this what you've wanted?" Shepard retorted through a tightened jaw.

"Not exactly," the Legionnaire gave a singular chuckle before jabbing with his free arm in an attempt to stab the human, but Shepard countered by disengaging from the lock and bringing his sword down, knocking the Legionnaire's weapon away with a distinct _clang_.

The two combatants slowly paced up the stairs as they beheld each other carefully, moving like wary lions about to pounce upon unsuspecting prey. Snow continued to build up around them as it cut across the air like knives, the impacts stinging Shepard's cheeks as the fragile droplets contrasted with his warm face.

"You'll find that what I want and what's expected of me are two different things," the Legionnaire replied carefully as he readied his own blades for another attack. "There are forces at work that you've been blissfully oblivious to for longer than you could imagine. The clock's nearly run out on us, Shepard. We all will have to face a reckoning sooner or later."

Confused by the cyborg's cryptic statements, Shepard gave a slow blink. "What do you mean? Larsen?"

"No. Larsen's just the symptom of a larger problem. The contagion has already infected the Alliance right down to the core. You might be surprised to discover that Larsen should be the _least_ of your worries. Soon, you'll understand. In fact, there's—"

Unexpectedly, the Legionnaire retracted his right blade and whipped his arm down to his thigh, where a hidden compartment popped open to reveal the grip of a pistol. Nearly caught off guard by the sneaky maneuver, Shepard sidestepped just in time as the Legionnaire fired his weapon and the human swore he could feel the rocketing shocks of the miniature sonic boom the bullet left behind in its wake. His cheeks rippled from the impact and sour streaks seared themselves within his eyes.

The cyborg, furious at having missed again, made to adjust his aim, but Shepard had the upper hand this time. Forcing himself to move forward, the commander ducked and hurled his arm upward in a cutting motion—the pistol in the Legionnaire's hand then fell away in two pieces. The cyborg bellowed a multi-tiered note, one ostensibly of anger, and extended his rightmost blade yet again, but not before Shepard utilized the temporary opening to strike at the Legionnaire's unarmored flank. The human's omni-sword carved into the operative's knee, slicing through the thick armor as easily as butter and causing a few components to explode out of the exit wound as Shepard finished his strike. The Legionnaire pivoted to cut at Shepard again, but the human had swiftly gotten out of range in time to avoid the attack.

There was now a pronounced stagger to the Legionnaire's gait as pieces of his body continued to rain down upon the ground. The operative bellowed out and lifted his blades, eager to repay the favor in kind as he tried to disregard the damage done to his frame.

Shepard would have none of it. He skirted around the edge of the Legionnaire's striking zone, keeping the weight on the tips of his toes as he looked for an opening. The cyborg, evidentially becoming more and more frustrated with Shepard's tactics, hurled himself forward, all two tons of him, in an effort to spear the commander upon his pitch black swords.

Again, Shepard would sidestep the attack, and made a counter-maneuver of his own at the exact moment the Legionnaire shot on by. Expertly, Shepard angled his sword in a precise point and stabbed out, the tip of the omni-sword managing to penetrate the Legionnaire's upper arm, severing wires and puncturing one of the hydraulics. Once more the Legionnaire stumbled to a halt after completing his failed attack, his limp growing more heavily and his arm now becoming more sluggish.

"Impossible," the monster grunted out.

Shepard just stood his ground and offered the cyborg a tiny smirk as he angled his own blade into position.

Understandably enraged by the human's newfound confidence, the Legionnaire pushed his rage to the maximum as he increased the remaining hydraulic pressure in his limbs above the redline. His metal limbs now had enough force in them to dent the hull of a capital cruiser were the cyborg so inclined to showcase his abilities. Swords buzzing with activity, eager to taste blood, the Legionnaire raised his arms up and brought both of them down in a savage blow, the two blades whistling through the air as they carved through existence.

Shepard had to angle his weapon parallel to the ground to catch both of the Legionnaire's swords in the same strike, but the effort exerted by the machine painfully wrenched his arms downward. Before Shepard could cry out in pain, one of the Legionnaire's blades edged towards the human's face, slicing him open just above his eye, near his hairline.

A searing slash simmered across Shepard's skin. The cut momentarily felt like the surface of the sun, blistering in this frozen purgatory.

The commander shoved back and disengaged, using his free hand to wipe his face agonizingly. The cut was not bad, he tentatively determined. It was deep, but the blade had not seemed to have hit anything of importance. However, due to the face possessing so many blood vessels, Shepard found that the right side of his face quickly became coated in a thick and sticky red film of his own fluids, dribbling down his eyes and cheeks to drip off his chin. In an instant, Shepard looked like a creature borne from hell himself and he spat furiously to clear his mouth.

At this point, it seemed that the Legionnaire was expecting Shepard to make a taunt of sorts, to try and psychologically influence his opponent that he perhaps needed to try a little harder with his next attack. That was not the case. Shepard unleashed a scream of his own and charged the cyborg, a whirling dervish with his sword.

Dumbfounded, the Legionnaire merely stared for a whole second before Shepard's sword hit him full on in the face. The blow did not disable the operative, but it made him even more fighting mad. His faceplate now cracked and smoking, the Legionnaire engaged a predetermined sword fighting program, hoping to tire out the commander so that he could land a disfiguring strike upon the human. It did not work, as Shepard blocked every strike that was sent his way, with each impact producing fearsome ripples that threatened to rip strands of matter apart.

In the middle of another lock the two became engaged in as their blades clashed together, the Legionnaire growled, light streaming through the cracks in his faceplate.

"Killing me won't stop the horrors that await you, Shepard."

"It will certainly make me feel a lot better," the human gritted out.

Extending his left palm, the one without a weapon, Shepard's omni-tool flared to life as the haptic explosives flickered into existence into its hemisphere shape. The Legionnaire realized too late that this was the exact same maneuver that Shepard had used against him on Rannoch, but by then, Shepard had pressed forward and touched the explosive to the cyborg's chest.

There was a distinct blast and a fierce hammer-blow of pressure shook the very earth. A kiloton of force was sent spiraling out of Shepard's tool and directly into the Legionnaire's chassis. Rendered momentarily weightless, the Legionnaire was helpless to do anything as the force of the blast sent him flying through the air, directly into the double doors of the Reichstag.

The cyborg burst through the heavy glass doors with ease, showering the ground with thick shards of glass. Snow blew in from outside, soaking the marble tiles and turning them slippery. The Legionnaire skidded for several meters upon his back as bits of metal frame and glass tumbled along with him. He came to an unexpected stop as he impacted heavily with the plinth of a towering copper statue that depicted one of Germany's kings. The stone base ended up being cracked as his head knocked against it.

Realizing where he was, the Legionnaire stared up at the ceiling as he began to laugh. The laugh turned sinister very quickly as the foyer echoed with the dark peals emanating from the artificial voice box. The cyborg still lay upon the floor, roaring his exuberance, as his fists clenched together in triumph.

Drawn by the laughter, Shepard's shadow momentarily was outlined as he slowly strode into the building, omni-sword at the ready, snow crackling as it lazily drifted upon the scorching hot tool.

"What the hell are you laughing at?" Shepard's gravelly voice intoned.

Still chuckling madly, the Legionnaire righted himself and tensed his limbs as he stood back up. Two of his eight optics had now darkened, damaged sometime during the attack, making his malevolent stare all the more apocalyptic and threatening.

"Sometimes a fortuitous line is tossed our way," the Legionnaire rasped. "My programming would not allow me to kill you unless I fulfilled my objective—bringing you to Larsen's location. Now… you are here, in his proximity. Now the restrictions have been lifted. Now there is nothing holding me back."

The nano-blades were drawn up to cross in front of the Legionnaire's face, a tiny clang emitting as the two pieces of refined metal lightly touched against one another.

"Now…" the monster whispered, "we can face our destinies together."

* * *

The gunfire filled the air as more and more Chimera troops descended upon the senate building. Trucks began piling up upon the access roads as there was now a blockage to even make it to the front doors. Mantis gunships swirled around overhead, not utilizing their large cannons just yet, as there were still far too many civilians in the area for them to be safely utilized.

On the ground, the Normandy crew fired in all directions while being judicious enough to avoid collateral damage as best as possible. The crackle of the discharge of weapons dissolved into a continuous cacophony, one that emitted the burning sensation of backfire mixed with the pungent tang of cordite.

Roahn, having sheltered herself within the Lynx for this whole time, finally jumped down from the main cabin, nearly falling to her hands as she stumbled for balance. A stray bullet deflected off one of the truck's armored panels an inch where Roahn's head was, causing her to whip around in surprise. The girl then staggered against the side of the truck as she made her way to Garrus, who was peeking out intermittently to take potshots at enemy troopers who dared to venture too close.

" _Garrus!_ " Roahn had to shriek above the din. " _Where's my dad?!_ "

"Roahn, what are you _doing?!_ " the turian hollered back after performing a double-take. "Get back inside where it's safe!"

To hammer this point home, Garrus had to duck as a smattering of bullets sheared off part of the Lynx's taillight—a brief smash followed by the soft tinkling of red glass upon the ground.

On the other hand, getting back into the Lynx was not an option as another errant burst strafed overhead to blow out the protective windshield of the front cabin. Roahn and Garrus simply stared as the last vestige of cover was shredded to bits.

"Where _is_ he?!" the girl screamed after a nearby grenade detonated.

Having seen that Roahn was not to be deterred, judging from the fact that she was still crouched down next to him, Garrus tilted his head up towards the steps and through the smashed doors of the Reichstag. "He went inside the building," he said tiredly. "I think he managed to get behind the enemy lines."

"Alone?!"

"Roahn, it's fine. Your father can—"

"No!" Roahn was aghast. " _No!_ He can't face that creature… that Legionnaire… alone! He needs you! He needs… someone."

Wheeling about, Roahn's eyes enlarged in a panic as she beheld the broken entrance to the building, seemingly miles away. She seemed so tiny in the wake of such impassive violence. So helpless and impotent. Almost like nothing she could do would matter in the slightest.

"Someone…"

The word tumbled from Roahn's lips.

Then, without hesitation and any warning, the tiny quarian girl tore past the barricade, past where Javik, Kaidan, and the others had set up positions, and up the shallow steps to rocket up towards the entrance of the Reichstag. She ignored the bullets racing over her head, the cries of the crowd as they got a glimpse of the girl running alone by herself, and the pleads from her heroes as she grew ever closer to the intimidating and dark opening.

" _Roahn!_ " Garrus and Liara screamed at the same time.

Her fear having been purged completely from her body, the quarian ignored them.

* * *

Shepard was not doing all that well.

Everything had descended into chaos and disaster ever since he had set foot into the Reichstag. The interior of the building had been pristine in polished government-centric and light-colored stonework, but the resulting scuffle had subsequently marred much of the furniture and trappings that had previously adorned the spotless room. Shepard had been on the defensive for most of the time in this place as he had furiously made to avoid the attacks sent his way by the Legionnaire, compounding the amount of damage that the poor foyer incurred from the residency of their fight.

The cyborg had been alternating going after the commander with his swords, cleaving a few sofas in two as they embarked in a game of cat-and-mouse around the lobby, and drawing forth a miniature grenade launcher so that he could lob explosives in the hopes of catching the human in a blast zone. The grenades were slow and easily avoided—Shepard found that as long as he kept moving, he could be relatively safe. The foyer was not the recipient of such courtesy. One of the errant grenades had met the statue of the Germanic king in the middle of the room, blowing the entire bust off the stand and leaving just an empty pillar standing in the midst of the fighting.

The Legionnaire had to take a moment to reload the grenade launcher and this was when Shepard made his first offensive maneuver. Lighting his omni-sword once more, Shepard sprinted from around the ruined base of the statue and cleaved the launcher in half with the blade—the weapon fell to pieces right in the Legionnaire's hands.

Annoyed at the loss of yet another weapon to the human, the Legionnaire snarled as he savagely dove forward and embarked in a bitter clash of blades with the man. Shouts from inside the building were now becoming more apparent as government workers and aides seemed to grow more aware that a fierce fight was brewing inside the Reichstag. Evacuation alarms were resounding off the walls, a piercing wail that nearly made Shepard wince from its sheer volume.

The combatants entered a temporary retreat after coming out of a brief lock. Their swords brushed the tile ground, scraping off splinters of the rock floor as they circled each other like hawks. Shepard was panting, sweat and blood dripping from his face. He saved his energy as best as he could, not devoting any of it into talking.

The Legionnaire was not unscathed either. Missing armor in sensitive areas and dealing with a damaged face plate, not to mention the fact that a few of his optic clusters were malfunctioning, the operative was keenly aware of his own mortality as he edged towards the human. Shepard backed up against the empty statue base, setting a hand resting upon it behind him, perhaps for reassurance.

"Close," the cyborg grunted as he raised his right arm. "But not close enough."

Punctuating this last word was a lingering grimace coupled with the blasting movement of the Legionnaire's lunge. Shepard, his eyes having been locked onto the tip of the incoming sword, sidestepped out of the way at the last moment. There was a heart-stopping second of total silence and the Legionnaire's nano-blade crunched as it embedded itself halfway into the marble base. Thick cracks jutted out from the impact site, threatening to crumble the entire pillar to rubble.

Knowing he had only scant seconds to react, Shepard brought his whole weight down into his next blow, which struck the Legionnaire's wrist. The kinetic force bent the cyborg's arm at the elbow, not powerful enough to sever it, but the flexing energies were enough that the Legionnaire's stuck sword broke off at the wrist, leaving the remaining point lodged in the stone bust.

The shattered blade point waggled tauntingly as it stayed embedded where it had been shunted in the marble.

"Try again," Shepard spat as the Legionnaire snarled at the sudden disassembly. Sharp and jagged edges marred the break site where the sword had cracked off of the operative's chassis.

"If you insist."

There was no room for Shepard to react. The Legionnaire abruptly made a slashing motion with his left arm, the one that still had a blade attached, and Shepard could only stare dumbly as he saw a dark blur head _right for his face._

He blinked.

White-hot pain exploded in his eyes as a thin cutting sensation trickled across his vision. Shepard cried out and staggered away instinctively, throwing up his hands to cover his face as a needle of agony inserted itself precisely upon his right eye. The pain was so acute that Shepard had the alarming notion that he might throw up. He moaned pitifully as he frantically tried to flutter his eyes, but everything was a dim blur in his vision, refusing to focus while the entire room remained frustratingly dim.

Everything wobbled. The spins started to hit Shepard. He felt dizzy. More blood gushed from his face and Shepard fell to a knee. His throat became ragged as his breath now came in lingering gasps. The fingers that were still plastered to his face were now slick with blood, slippery and soaked.

The pain briefly retreated and localized itself enough that Shepard was able to pry open his left eye as far as it could. Still his right side remained a blank spot. Desperate to regain his senses back, Shepard forcefully tried to blink his right eye as fast as he could, but that only drew forth a fresh slew of torturous suffering and repeated stabs that felt like something was burrowing through his socket straight to his cortex.

 _No…_ Shepard finally realized. _No…_

The pain would not subside. His vision, he now knew, would be forever damaged from that blow.

His right eye had been put out. He had been partially blinded.

This was confirmed when Shepard finally peeled his hands away and the remainder of his vision failed to seep back into his senses. His brain could only register a void—a permanent blind spot—that was merely a memory of what his eye had been able to see before. Blood and gore stained the tiles at his feet. Shepard felt faint.

Footfalls of something large heading his way dimly registered in the recesses of his mind, but Shepard no longer seemed to care. He knelt on the floor, sapped, too badly hurt to continue. The frenetic thrusts that materialized in his head as spikes through the membrane that separated his eye from his brain poked long and hard. It felt like someone had driven a wickedly sharp knife through his head.

 _My eye. My eye._

"I thought you would have put up more of a fight," he heard the cruel voice of the Legionnaire enter his head, the voice growing close as the source approached.

The operative crept forward, blade angled downward as he prepared to plunge it into Shepard's neck.

"An ignominious end for the storied commander," the cyborg hissed. "But find comfort in the fact that I would have done the same to anyone else. If someone would come between my fate as you did, I would destroy them without hesitation. Despite everything that transpired before, no one else could do a better job as you. Your quick death will be a token of my respect."

" _Chatika!_ " a shrill voice screamed from the entrance.

A bolt of lightning split the very fabric of time.

The Legionnaire roared as several thousand volts of electricity suddenly zapped into his frame, causing his optics to flicker and his voice to distort. Trickles of pure-white energy streamed across the operative's form, scything like tentacles, billowing in sheets. The cyborg's entire body arched in pain, his fingers twitching helplessly before the sensation dropped away. He fell to the floor, same as Shepard, but his breathing was coming in tatters as he turned to witness what had happened.

"It… it can't be…" the Legionnaire uttered in shock.

A multi-layered aureate drone of violet and aqua hues hovered above the ground just behind the cyborg. Shifting plates envisioned a spherical shape as the combat drone crackled with power, readying itself to deliver the next salvo.

Behind the drone, omni-tool at the ready, was… a girl.

Not just any girl.

Roahn.

"G-Get…" the girl trembled, her voice betraying her fear but she swallowed it down at the last second, "get away… f-from m-my dad."

Exhaling in a hissing burst, the Legionnaire merely leveled his oculi at Roahn, a visual cue akin to baring one's teeth. The drone, a gift to Roahn from her mother—so named Chatika vas Paus—seemed to sense the danger about to boil over and edged a foot or two away from the target it had just attacked.

The Legionnaire raised a fist and sent it straight down in a hammer blow, crushing the drone between it and the floor. Chatika emitted a tiny cry before the stress was too much and she dematerialized with a burst of static and a few blinks. The cyborg's fist, no longer held up, then smashed into the floor, crushing rock and metal with sheer brute force.

"Ah, the _daughter_ ," the Legionnaire's voice beckoned cruelly as he got back to his feet, ignoring Shepard behind him. "The gap in the profile. Different, but so very similar. Reckless, just like your father."

"I'm more like him than you realize!" Roahn shouted as she engaged another control on her tool.

The girl's scanning tool blared to life and she angled her palm directly towards the cyborg's face. An invisible gamut of microwaves once more spat forth and crashed into the sensitive cluster of electronics within the Legionnaire. The operative's blood ran cold as he now realized the true source of this unique agony, having felt it twice before. Even as the feedback sent critical electrical errors spiraling towards his brain in jagged bursts, tearing at the tissues and flesh encased in the metal shell, there was still a part of him that could see clearly, that could behold the danger through the myopia.

Everything on the Legionnaire was erratically locking up, producing a myriad of violations translating into software codes that popped up in his HUD. His vision was slowly becoming ruined the more the microwaves messed with his system.

He did not scream. He did not cry out.

Instead, the Legionnaire mustered an excruciating step, fighting past the blindness, the deafness, and the urge for his digestive system to purge its entire contents. It was not real, the Legionnaire reasoned. This was not to be his destiny.

The cyborg scraped forward another punished step, his vocabulator now producing animal-like howls as the adrenaline canisters within his skull dumped their essence within his bloodstream, dulling the pain and allowing him to push himself farther than he had ever been pushed before.

" _He_ was responsible for your mother's death," the cyborg croaked as he appeared to shake the effects of the scanner off. "An irresponsible impediment to your childhood. You don't even share a blood connection with him. What loyalty could you possibly have to such a hindrance?"

"I don't care," Roahn grimaced seconds before she pummeled the scanner function again, her confidence rising. "He's still my father."

Reacting to the fresh burst of microwaves, the Legionnaire jerked rapidly in place, almost like an electric current was running through him when the drone had previously unleashed its attack upon him. The effect was not as long-lasting and soon the cyborg stumbled forward, his punished lungs rasping as they shriveled up from the painful stimulus.

"You will always be his mistake," the monster chortled as he plodded closer to Roahn, his claw-like arms now outstretched. "He would impart his sins unto you. You must realize this."

"You're wrong," Roahn shouted as she waited for her tool to recharge, alternating with frantic glances down before the meter filled up to full. "He made sure that I understood him!"

"A fatal error. Your comprehension will amount to nothing."

"The error isn't mine," Roahn seethed as her tool finally blinked in readiness. " _Now… go to HELL!_ "

The quarian's finger zoomed down towards the fateful button, intent on stopping the vile creature in his tracks for good. Only, in the barest instant before Roahn could touch the control, the Legionnaire swiped his hand out, his metal appendages curling over Roahn's forearm before he abruptly pulled his limb back, taking the girl's omni-tool with him without causing so much as a scratch upon the girl.

"No!" Roahn cried as she felt the device being pulled off her wrist.

The Legionnaire dangled the tool tauntingly between two scratched fingers before he carelessly crumpled it up and discarded it behind him like a piece of litter. The omni-tool crunched pathetically as it died and emitted a scant couple of pure magnesium-white sparks as the electronic innards scraped against one another in its death throes.

"If you so wish to be like your father," the cyborg said as he angled his remaining blade ever so slightly while he backed the terrified Roahn into a corner, looking to pierce the terrified girl's chest, "then I will oblige."

Hell could not contain the malice that so flowed like water from the infinite well of the Legionnaire. Fire seemed to rain down from above, all contained within that frozen but pure expression that the metallic plates had molded themselves in. A faint wisp of snow, carried in from the shattered doorway, blew in a faint gust overhead, spiraling in the still air.

The beast then struck.

Only to be stopped in place as a sphere of cerulean _élan vital_ closed itself over the Legionnaire's fist, halting the trajectory of the obsidian blade just inches from Roahn's suit.

"What?!" the cyborg bellowed, stunned at the interruption as he found himself unable to move his entire arm.

From near the doorway, snow hurled in soaking sheets around the figure who had their arms splayed out, faint tendrils of energy seeking their targets as they held the biotic field open for as long as they could.

"Not if _we_ oblige first!" Liara shouted triumphantly, a nimbus wisp rimming around her form.

Staring daggers at the asari, the Legionnaire shook with an indignant anger. "You… little cun—"

A concussive burst then rocketed onto the scene, smashing into the cyborg's face while, at the same time, Liara released the biotic field, allowing the Legionnaire to be thrown to the ground with a deafening crash.

"The kid's with _us_ , thanks!" Garrus called out as he stepped up behind Liara, his rifle smoking after it had thrown out the heavy projectile.

The Legionnaire groaned as he struggled to get to his feet, but the arrival of a heavy individual, judging by the audible cues and from the vibrations upon the ground, prevented the damaged operative from recovering fully, as an enormous blow from an elephantine war hammer clobbered itself upon the small of the Legionnaire's back, plastering the cyborg down to the ground again with a fearsome clangor.

Standing overhead, Grunt bent his elbows as he prepared to deliver another fearsome salvo with the hammer clenched tightly in his hands. A grimace graced the krogan's jaw as he bared his teeth, all amusement having fled the vicinity. "You killed my overlord. Now I'll kill you."

"How… utterly… original," the Legionnaire spat moments before the next hammer strike collided with the back of his head, causing his forehead to rebound off the tile floor, which cracked from the strain of the force.

Glass crackled and liquid dribbled as pieces of the Legionnaire's faceplate fell from his helmeted head. The cyborg was starting to babble incoherently as half of his optics were now winking on and off in random intervals, either cracked or damaged beyond repair. The enraged krogan, now possessing the intense desire to rip something apart with his bare hands, tossed aside the war hammer and bodily picked up the Legionnaire by the bent armor plating upon his back. The Legionnaire could do nothing but observe the next course of action as Grunt hurled him forward like a battering ram face-first into the marble stand, slamming him full-on into the stone surface.

More metal and glass sheared away as the Legionnaire's face became completely distorted beyond its original proportions. The side of the cyborg's helmet had been wrenched severely to the side, exposing the bloody bone and tissue beyond the safety of its original partition. The Legionnaire belched smoke, spat flames, and emitted electric bolts as multiple body processes shut themselves down as a result of the damage, one after the other. Embers brimming with light exhaled from the air filters near the Legionnaire's collar, expelling warm and dust.

" _Get… off…_ " the Legionnaire wheezed.

Grunt was not at all finished with toying around with his enemy, but the cybernetic operative managed to recover enough functionality to roll on his side and expel a concussive burst of his own from a hidden slot in his forearm. The krogan gave a yowl as the projectile propelled directly into his gut, but the force of the blast only deposited Grunt a few feet away, not at all performing any permanent damage. It did tumble the alien end over end for a couple of seconds, temporarily dispatching him.

As the Legionnaire staggered once more to his feet, a warp field then beset itself upon him, scorching at his armor and cracking the sensitive polymers housed within. Jack, Kaidan, and Miranda had leapt beside Liara, the four now combining their strength to create a containment field that not even an individual as powerful as the Legionnaire could escape from. Writhing and screaming from within his prison, the operative spasmed as the crushing forces imparted themselves upon his frame, bending and twisting everything completely out of shape.

Incoming gunfire then seared its way past the biotic field, going _inside_ it to merge with the being trapped within. Garrus, Kasumi, James, and Javik had all levelled their rifles and set them to full automatic, creating a never-ending turbulent clamor that threatened to shake the very foundations of the Reichstag down to the ground. Incendiary rounds, armor-piercing rounds, and disruptor rounds all sailed in a fan of destruction, billowing past the semi-tangible field to impact with the Legionnaire, causing eruptions to emit all across the cyborg's body.

"Hold, everyone!" Liara screamed as sweat dribbled down her face, her limbs struggling to keep the field around the Legionnaire contained. "Just… a little longer!"

Locked in on their adversary, the soldiers keeping up the continuous fire opened their mouths in soundless roars, drowned out by the bellows their own weapons emitted.

Liara strained.

Jack cursed.

Kaidan growled.

Miranda grunted.

Garrus tensed.

The rippling dome of the warp field swirled, bulged, and sizzled with energy. The cold violet color of the biotic aura rapidly warmed and turned a wine-like rose. The cloudy light turned to dust and then appeared to condense into a liquid, flowing freely over the hemisphere that contained the powerful foe. A distant whine rose in pitch, slowly building in intensity. Scintilla and ash collided in a cosmic firestorm, spewing all manner of effervescent and discernable light.

Liara felt something in her nose let go and the asari suddenly found the front of her face drenched with blood. Daring to crack her eyes open, she saw that the rest of her friends holding the field up with her were also bleeding from their noses, the pressure from the effort too great for their bodies to handle.

"Hold…" she whispered. "Hold… please…"

Kasumi breathed.

James howled.

Javik spat.

Roahn beheld.

The monolithic and nearly Brobdignagian energies all consolidating upon that singular point seemed to bubble, simmer, and finally implode for a nanosecond. The resulting forces from the biotics and the bullets winked out in an instant and the entire room, in the next moment, turned topsy-turvy as a seismic pulse rippled unexpectedly through existence, throwing everyone in the room off their feet.

The floor broke in circular folds. Waves of compression pummeled their way through rock, flesh, and bone. A gigantic and invisible hand comprised of pressure took everyone in turn and hurled them in all directions, flying away from the nexus where the Legionnaire was.

Eerie rings replaced the noises in their heads. Smoke and dust mingled with the snow from outside. Strobing flashes burned their way over everyone's vision. Deaf, dumb, and blind, they groped for tangibility, for some semblance of reality.

Gasping in relief, the Legionnaire finally straightened from kneeling upon the floor now that the biotic filed had dropped, his shattered and smoking body still vibrating from the pulse he had deployed as his last result. Dark fluids wept from several cracks in his armor. A fire had erupted in the mechanism of his right shoulder, sending thick sparks to drool over the sopping wet ground. The monster swept his gaze over the temporarily disabled Normandy crew, knowing that the seismic pulse his frame contained was not effective enough to kill, merely to disable. Still, he took pride in the sight, knowing that he had gone against the famous crew of the fabled warship… and had _won_.

"A… pitiful failure," the Legionnaire murmured morosely, disappointed at the efforts presented.

Limping in a tentative stumble, there was the distinct moment of muteness that accompanied the upheaval of the anticipated status quo that the Legionnaire failed to observe until it was too late.

He felt something impact him upon his back.

The cyborg then screamed out as there was the sound of metal being punctured and he gave a fierce jerk forward. A sharp pressure had been willed into existence in the lower reaches of his body and the Legionnaire looked down to find the tip of the nano-blade—the one that had broken off in the beginnings of the fight—was now sticking straight through where his stomach was nestled within its gut sac.

He had been impaled with his own weapon.

" _Was it?_ " he heard Shepard's voice cry out triumphantly.

Now the Legionnaire understood. What remained of his oculi zoned right in on where he had seen his wayward blade last—embedded in the plinth while fighting with the commander. That blade was now absent from its perch—no longer was it stuck there as just an empty hole remained, black and rimmed with cracks. Shepard must have pulled it out in the chaos of the moment.

Something felt like it had ruptured within the Legionnaire and he turned his attention back down to where the tip of his sword was protruding from his abdomen. Thick and clear fluid, along with blood, coursed down his waist and splattered at his feet. The artificial sac that held his guts had undoubtedly been punctured. His organs had been ruined.

But it had not been a killing blow. Turning back around, the Legionnaire saw the exhausted Shepard, hunched over with blood pouring from his ruined eye socket, panting through gritted teeth. The impaled cyborg appraised the wound dealt to him, not knowing whether to respond with admiration or sheer indigence.

"You actually _did_ come the closest out of anyone," the Legionnaire carefully stated.

Wiping the blood from his face as best he could, Shepard's furious expression did not change. "I'm not done with you yet."

The cyborg gave a rough scoff. "Even with my back turned, you couldn't finish me properly. Am I never to find someone who is my superior? No… my fate _has_ to be tied to you, Shepard. There can be no one else. Perhaps I just haven't found the proper motivation for you yet!"

Before anyone could stop him, the Legionnaire abruptly turned to pluck an object that had been hiding behind a nearby staircase. Screaming in terror, Roahn was lifted into view as the Legionnaire's damaged fingers gripped her by her _sehni_ , dangling her over the ground as her legs kicked out in every direction.

"No!" Shepard screamed as he feebly held out a hand, impotent in the face of evil. "Don't you fucking touch her!"

" _Dad!_ " Roahn cried out as she tried to squirm her way out from the cyborg's grasp, to no avail.

Shepard roared out in horror again, but he was weaponless. Unarmed. Even the omni-sword he had used in his fight was now malfunctioning, unreliable at the worst possible moment.

Roahn… in the talons of the most nefarious form evil had chosen to inhibit. It was too much. Shepard was paralyzed. Catatonic in the face of such cruelty. The girl continued to howl as she beat fruitlessly on the hand gripping her ceremonial fabric so tightly that bits of the sewed loops were beginning to fray.

 _Not my daughter. Anyone but her. I can't lose her too._

"This is the way it was always meant to be!" the Legionnaire bellowed as he clambered up onto the empty base that had previously held the bronze statue of the Germanic king. Standing atop the platform, the metal machine became statuesque in his own right, imposing and intimidating as he held the girl in his grip. The empty sockets of the skull that could be glimpsed beyond the veil of the shattered faceplate held no empathy, no life. Just cold intention and determination.

Shepard nearly fell to his knees as he held his hands aloft. "Don't hurt the girl. Don't hurt her!"

"Don't hurt her? There's only way to prevent that. You need to finish what you've started, Shepard!" the Legionnaire shot back, his voice taking on a thick reverberation within the cavernous room. "You need to kill me or I will kill your child. I won't be able to stop otherwise. You know this."

"Don't do it. Please."

The Legionnaire appeared to thrum with pleasure as he now held up his blade close to Roahn's throat. "You can only _beg_. I have you like this and your only thought is to _beg_. For her life. So, Shepard, what will you do now? You are alone. Pitiful and small. Will you merely give up? Try, human. Try and save your only child."

The indignation! Holding a blade to a child! Venom choked Shepard so hard that he nearly hurled out of grief. But without a weapon and his team temporarily indisposed… how could he stop this thing?

"I…" Shepard meekly shook his head. "I…"

" _Try!_ "

Roahn, who had been struggling the entire time, suddenly slackened as her eyes relaxed into a peaceful formation. Almost in a dream-like state, she turned her head and mustered the bravest sort of courage she had ever conjured in her life.

"Dad," her calm voice floated out.

" _Roahn,_ " the father whispered.

"Don't worry about me. I'll be fine."

Shepard was about to ask, but his eyes caught a flash of movement and he stilled himself so tightly that the act of drawing breath caused him great pain. Even under this moment of duress, Roahn stopped grabbing at the Legionnaire's hand holding her by her _sehni_ several feet above the ground and slowly drifted them down towards her waist…

…where the pistol that her father had given her still hung.

With a nearly inaudible snap, the girl withdrew the gun and, quick as a flash, raised her arm up so fast that even the Legionnaire did not have time to witness the act. All the cyborg could observe was the circular chasm of the pistol barrel edging itself towards his face, the maw bearing down on him with grim pleasure.

Then Roahn pulled the trigger.

The gun gave a pop.

Blood and bone erupted in a spray from the Legionnaire's head, a searing-hot jet that arced away from the exit wound, shattered into reality from the tiny bullet. Gears twitched and the cyborg's fingers sprang open on instinct, releasing the girl, but Roahn's _sehni_ was caught between some of the closed plates and the fabric could not take the stress anymore. With a loud ripping noise, the _sehni_ tore itself to tatters, the pieces of the cloth sheared into the wind as Roahn, her dull gold helmet now starkly exposed, was sent into a tumbling fall, freed from the Legionnaire to now become a prisoner of gravity's embrace.

The girl gave a cry as she flailed about, but the moment of savage free-fall lasted less than a second, for a distinct crystal-blue aura shone about her, catching her descent and carrying her aloft a meter above the hard floor. Liara, recovered from the effects of the Legionnaire's pulse, had raised herself from the ground and had emitted a careful biotic field at the last moment, preventing Roahn from falling the complete distance and breaking any bones from such a height.

Garrus then sprinted forward through the snow and smoke, and caught the slowly descending girl, embarking into a brief roll that ended with Roahn being cradled against the turian's armored chest, both well away from harm.

"Got you!" Garrus whispered to the child.

The Legionnaire, miraculously still alive, wobbled on his legs before finally tumbling to earth. There was no one to catch him. Two meters of straight falling and the cyborg smashed to the ground with a powerful shockwave. More and more pieces cracked off the chassis as the operative was finally damaged beyond repair. Stone, glass, and metal sprayed across the floor around the Legionnaire's body. Blood continued to seep from his wounds, and even a distinct piece of bone tumbled out from within the helmet—a remnant of the skull sheltered by the armor.

While the operative tried with all his might to straighten up, to push past the crippling disabilities inflicted upon him, Shepard was there to beat him to the punch as he now stood in front of the cyborg, ready to tear the thing apart piece by piece if he had to.

But Grunt would offer something else to utilize. "Shepard, here!" the krogan shouted as he tossed the human his war hammer from the far end of the foyer.

Fueled by the massive throw, the dull stone nestled atop the staff of the hammer dimly glinted in the low light as it sailed through the air. It tumbled end over end across the room for it to be caught perfectly in Shepard's hands. The human immediately hefted the weapon as he took a large stride over to the Legionnaire, who was just starting to sit up where he knelt.

" _Now_ it's finished," Shepard uttered before he swung the hammer down in a final cry.

His enemy met his fate unblinking.

The Legionnaire's head disappeared in an explosion of blood and metal. Gore squirted out from between the hammer's stone and the remnants of the cyborg's body. The entirety of the Legionnaire's skull and brains were crushed to a paste, leaving a headless corpse teetering upright all by itself. Alloys made wrenching sounds as the internal mechanisms of the chassis finally quieted, leaving only the incidental noises to fill the remainder of the air.

The hammer still lodged into the neck, the body of the Legionnaire toppled over, forever still.

The room finally fell silent. Even the sounds from outside had dampened down to a near trickle.

Shepard's knees wobbled and he collapsed onto the ground with a heavy sigh. Nearby, Roahn wrenched herself away from Garrus and ran over to her father. Her hands gently wrapped around Shepard's shoulders as she tried not to look at his empty eye socket, darkened with blood, that now seemed to suck in her attention like a black hole.

"I'm okay," Shepard breathed as he tenderly embraced his daughter, squeezing his eye shut so tightly that tears trickled out to leave rivulets through the blood that splattered his face. "I'm okay."

Shepard hardly noticed that Roahn's _sehni_ had been complete destroyed, ripped to pieces. The little quarian did look rather forlorn without the cloth adorning her helmet, the tubing and wiring that linked up at the back of her covering now sitting completely exposed, but the swelling relief that burgeoned from that child's heart outdid any of the damage done unto her. She was alive. She was safe.

Fatigued, shell-shocked, and completely frazzled, Roahn's hug tightened uncontrollably as she could only muster a single sob as she held onto her father. The human could feel the little body of his girl tremble so heavily that she was nearly going into spasms. All this fear, he realized, had been his doing. To quell her nerves, Shepard returned the intensity of his embrace, silently crying not out of pain, but for the love he had for his daughter.

For the next minute, they held each other in the total silence.

* * *

Eventually, the inhabitants of the Reichstag, no doubt alarmed by the chaos that had occurred in the front lobby of the building, eventually and tentatively peeked out of whatever room they had chosen to take cover in and slowly approached the scene. Businessmen in suits. Government officials with briefcases. All looked equally shocked and appalled. Their confusion was compounded even more when they noticed that one of the sources of the commotion had been Commander Shepard himself. After all, the man had not been seen on Earth in years.

Ordinarily such a horrifying arena would no doubt be the source of many sensational newsworthy articles for weeks to come, but rather quickly, everyone in the building and the rest of the world found another surprise in the wings, waiting to catch them off guard.

On cue, the omni-tools upon every single living person in the building, from all over and far away, chimed as they received a modestly-sized audio file. It was designated as a file of extreme importance, denoting specific individuals and its overall message in the contents of the document. A few curious souls opened the file immediately. They did not mute the sound.

 _"…ever since I helped award them the Alliance contract, their involvement is now cemented with this kind of legitimacy in their actions. Koenig just runs the day-to-day operations, but I'm the one who actually mandates where Chimera gets to go."_

For the hundreds of people who had been assigned to work in the Reichstag, it was highly unlikely that none of them would not be able to recognize the voice of perhaps the most powerful senator in the Alliance today. A chill fell over the air as recognition seeped into the minds of the many, and there was a distinct sensation of darkness floating over the whole affair, almost like someone had thrown a wet blanket over the whole sorry business.

The voice of Raynor Larsen continued unimpeded, oblivious to the growing animosity. " _In this case, I've been given carte blanche into helping mold Chimera into an effective enough force. I've actually based a lot of it on Cerberus' model for running a military, ironically enough."_

"Jesus Christ," someone in the crowd said aloud. No one bothered to shush him.

Shepard managed to get to his feet while everyone was distracted with this. Liara had done good work, he noted with a smile. She had disseminated Larsen's rantings and ramblings immediately after his fight with the Legionnaire had concluded. As the ex-Shadow Broker, she had ways of getting everyone's omni-tool address so that she could send out the document to the greatest amount of people possible. Evidentially, she had succeeded in her goal.

Trying to downplay the limp he had just received, Shepard was about to lead Roahn and everyone else out the door when he suddenly spotted a figure shove their way to the front of the pack from deeper within the building. Followed by a loyal posse, this new arrival seemed harried and out of breath as they stumbled out into the shambles of the foyer, his eyes tracking Shepard and his crew while utilizing every second to its advantage.

Slicked black hair. Finely trimmed goatee. Immaculately tailored striped suit. Raynor Larsen in the flesh.

Larsen's eyes flicked from the wounded commander and his crew, to the destruction that had torn the room apart, and finally to the fallen body of the headless Legionnaire lying next to the ruins of what had been a priceless statue. The gears rapidly turned in his head and the resulting expression that graced his features was one of pure loathing and aggravation as he undoubtedly realized that all of his meticulous plans were about in as many pieces as the Legionnaire was right about now.

"You…" Larsen lifted a shaking finger in Shepard's direction, appalled beyond all recognition. "You're an absolute _psychopath_. A delinquent _thug_ that destroys anything that you touch. What in the name of—what is the meaning of this?! What have you done?! This is how you repay us? By decimating our infrastructure? Killing your countrymen? Terrorizing the very people you swore to protect? Do you really hate your own kind so much that you would run roughshod over them just to have your way?"

The man was fronting, attempting to put on a good show as he had heard the recordings of his own voice being broadcast up and down the halls, no doubt. Some of the audio files were still playing, overlapping Larsen's voice with his actual words as he continued to speak, albeit with a nervous glimmer in his eyes.

Shepard screwed up his face, the pain slowly beginning to subside to a steady throb, as he took a deliberate step forward, pins and needles shooting all up his legs as he moved. Roahn tugged at his hand, a silent plea for him to let this go. He looked down at the girl's forlorn expression. She looked so lost without a _sehni_ , Shepard sadly realized. With a heavy heart, his gauntleted hand slipped from her grasp as he walked over to Larsen, keeping his eye line level.

Larsen was starting to realize that the tide of public opinion was slowly ebbing away from him as many people close by were shooting him looks of disgust. Some were even backing away from him slowly. Muted grumblings now joined the chorus of his own voice, deepened and darkened with grim forebodings. Despite his gut instinct, Larsen persisted.

"This is an outrage! Did you really expect that you could come down here, blow your way through a few armed guards and claim yourself a moral victory today? You think that chaos and destruction are tools that exist to aid you? Like it or not, you live under the banner of the Alliance! You can't evade the veil of accountability, especially after the debacle in this city, one of which was entirely the result of _your_ actions!"

 _It's only a debacle for you_ , Shepard thought as he continued to plod his way over.

"The days of the Spectres are over!" Larsen roared, spittle flying from his mouth. "The bureaucracy—the red tape—exists for a reason! To protect the public from hooligans making up the rules as they go along. You don't answer to the Council, you answer to us! Humans! You have no idea how the galaxy works, Shepard! _We don't have happy endings here!_ There is no 'winner-take-all' scenario for us! The decisions we make here are nestled with conditions that sap the lifeblood from our constituents. We are in a zero-sum game here, my friend. You may think you're doing something on the righteous path now, but… in ten years? Five? You'll be _begging_ to take your actions back so that you can preserve your halcyon days!"

Not giving an inch, Shepard mutely continued to stride over to the senator, his jaw clamped shut although his fists were certainly clenched tight.

Larsen was now appearing to demonstrate a bit of a sweat as the combined clamor of his own voice in the recordings was starting to cause his damnation to weigh all the more heavily upon him. Even as the armored form of Shepard approached, he stood his ground, albeit he was starting to lean back a little.

"You're nothing but a relic, Shepard! A soldier without a government. Nothing but the surfeit of a shattered authority, driven solely by your ego! What weight do you hold when you're compared to me? On this world, you're nothing, Shepard! You're the coward who selfishly fled to form your own little utopia instead of admitting your culpability in aiding and abetting war criminals! I'm the relatable politician who was in the trenches for months on end, digging the bodies of my family from the rubble! _You_ left and _I_ stayed behind!

By this time, Shepard had made it to within a foot of Larsen. He could easily reach out and _touch_ the man's lapel if he wanted. Hell, he could even snap his neck now that there were no guards around. Quick and clean, before anyone could react. This was the man who tried to ruin his life. This was his enemy!

But Shepard remained steadfast and maddeningly quiet. Larsen held eye contact with Shepard but was quickly unnerved when he took stock of the fact that the commander was missing an eye. If anything that only seemed to make Shepard more dangerous.

Sensing the fact that he would not find any sympathy from his colleagues in the crowd behind him, Larsen jerked his head to the side as his lips pulled back in a sneer. "What do we do now, Shepard?"

It took all his might for Shepard not to respond to the senator's question.

Frustrated at the continued silence from the commander, Larsen tilted his head downward as he gave a sigh before he gestured in the direction of a nearby office. "You came all this way to get to me. I still have some obligation to such initiative."

Threading a path through the angered crowd, Shepard remained in Larsen's wake and he spared a final glance at Roahn behind him, who tenderly raised a hand to bid him farewell—three fingers spaced out in the open air.

With an agonized smile, Shepard returned the gesture.

* * *

The heavy wooden door—a relic of the past in its own right—clicked shut as Larsen twisted the doorknob deliberately. The broad-framed senator then strode past Shepard, who was standing in the middle of the unfamiliar office, and walked behind the lone desk to stare out of the tall window—one that offered a view onto the crowded plaza below.

The office was not Larsen's, which Shepard could tell because the name plate atop the wooden desk did not at all match. The floor was a thick carpet colored a shade of green so dark that it appeared black. Bookshelves full of datapads and actual paper-based tomes filled the counters—mostly publications filled to the brim of dense legalese and other impenetrable passages.

Shepard felt so exposed standing in the middle of this office, but he was still so pumped full of adrenaline that it was easy to imagine that he radiated rage. He was anger incarnate, and if his current expression was not an indication of that fact, then it had to be the damaged and bloodied state of his face and armor that would drive that point home to full effect.

Larsen then turned away from the window to appraise Shepard, acting as if he forgot the commander had been standing there for half a minute without any prompting.

"So," the senator began in a resigned fashion as he walked over to the heavy desk, but did not move to sit at it, "I trust that you're feeling rather good about today?"

Shepard was statuesque to the point of barely breathing.

Larsen just simpered at the non-response, toying his fingers along the polished wooden surface. "Of course. How you must hate me, Shepard. You likely imagine that you have won by this point. After all, you've trounced the best that Chimera has to offer in your effort to make it this far. How incredibly naïve of you. You think that getting rid of me is going to solve your problem? I only wanted to strengthen humanity after we had been battered from that damnable war. I was entrusted with finding a solution that would bring a lasting peace to this galaxy!"

"Peace?" Shepard finally chucked as he shook his head in derision. "Wasn't that what _I_ was fighting for back then?"

The senator visibly glowered. "You took care of the problem at hand but you left a vacuum in your wake. With the Reapers defeated, and the veil of superiority dropped, it was time for someone to take the reins of civilization and be the new leader of the coming order! That was to be humanity's destiny! And you… you willingly undid years of work with this little stunt… all because I ruined your house."

"It was not _just_ about the house," Shepard grimaced. "The scheming. The chasing. The fear and terror. You brought back to me the life that I had vowed to set aside for someone that you would never have the pleasure of meeting in person. All because your ambition could not take the fact that I had shunned you that one day, when I refused to help you damage our relationships with our allies."

"Yet… all you had to do was talk. If you had only talked… all of this would never have come to pass."

"You would have turned me into a political tool, Larsen. I vowed the second that I woke up in that hospital bed with Tali at my side that I would never fight someone else's war ever again."

Larsen's eyes slowly narrowed as the man appraised the armored denizen. "You withheld classified material and endangered billions from your actions, Shepard."

"And _you_ would endanger billions more had I told you what I knew back then," Shepard shot back. "The public _will_ know what I had to overcome during the war, Larsen. Sooner or later, I will give them the truth. But when that happens, the knowledge will not bring you any benefit."

"What could _you_ know of benefit?" Larsen seethed as he stepped around the desk in a stomping motion and swept a paperweight off it at the same time, earning a solid clunking noise as the heavy object hit the carpet. "The Council's stonewalling of your initial efforts to bring the Reapers to light ended in disaster! When they _withheld_ that information from the public for years, did you honestly think that they were making the right choice? How are _you_ different from _them_ , Shepard? What prevents me from calling you a hypocrite… _Commander?!"_

"Nothing, that's what!" Shepard shouted.

The room rapidly absorbed the noise gracing its boundaries, leaving a stuffy void in its place.

"Nothing…" Shepard repeated. "But the Council refused to disseminate information on the Reapers that would have helped us in the fight. What I know… the asari's Prothean beacon and the meddling of the salarians… it won't help anyone. It will only coordinate chaos. Destruction. I won't have that on my hands, Larsen."

"Because your hands are bloody enough, is that it?" Larsen bitterly scowled. "You would say such a thing to my face?"

The pale and quiet look that emanated from Shepard's lone eye was enough to give even a steel-hearted man like Larsen pause.

"Do you think your wife and child would be proud of who you've become?" Shepard whispered. "Is this really what you think they would have wanted of you?"

Shepard could tell that Larsen was fighting the urge to take a solid whack at his face, for his skin was turning quite a few brilliant shades of crimson in rapid fashion.

"And…" the senator said back carefully, "…what about _your_ family, Shepard? Would your wife have wanted to see you turn against your fellow humans? What about your daughter? Does she even respect or even comprehend the decisions that you've made? Are you the idol that a child like her needs?"

The mere mention of Roahn from Larsen's lips was enough to drive Shepard completely over the edge.

With a singular stride, Shepard got so up close to Larsen that the back of the latter man's legs were driven hard into the edges of the desk. Blood continued to trickle from the remnants of the soldier's eye, some drops even making their way onto Larsen's shirt, staining the cloth.

"I just want you to know," Shepard spoke softly, "that I didn't come all this way over here for you simply because you blew up my house, tortured me for information, or sent an assassin to hound me across the galaxy for weeks. I came here to hurt you because you threatened the life of my daughter. Because you put that girl in harm's way… I can't let go what you did."

"You can't—" Larsen barely had time to blurt out before Shepard's fist savagely plowed its way into Larsen's stomach.

The senator gave a wheezing cough and doubled over after all the air was solidly driven out of his lungs. The commander had hit Larsen so hard that his victim started to see stars. His windpipe gave a revolting gargle as he tried in vain to gasp for breath, but not before Shepard rudely grabbed at the senator's perfectly combed hair and delivered a powerful punch to the jaw. Larsen spun all the way around and fell upon the desk, blood bubbling from a cut on his lip, cheek plastered to the top of the wooden counter.

Shepard then shoved his hand firmly down upon Larsen's back, holding him in place while he readied his free arm for another attack. "For god's sake, you never stopped being a massive prick. You and your pugnacious attitude. Just for once, can you at least find the sense within you and admit that you've lost?"

The door to the office then slammed open and Shepard turned his head to observe the disruption.

Armed guards—policemen—hurried into the room and took out their service weapons and pointed them at Shepard. There were five of them, all decked out in riot gear. Their heavier guns were slung on their back as they were inefficient in these close quarters. Their steely gazes were not focused upon Larsen, but all were fixated upon the man restraining him in a threatening position.

"Hold it!" the lead cop barked at the commander. "Release the senator and step away from him, now!"

 _Oh… damn it_ , Shepard thought as his face began to fall.

Below him, his face still shoved into the desk, Larsen began to nastily laugh. "I'm not the one who spoke too soon, eh?"

"You bastard," Shepard whispered as he continued to hold onto the senator for just a few more seconds. He was right here. He _had_ him! Larsen could not, after all this, end up slipping away! He just couldn't!

Shepard's arms noticeably tensed as he pondered if doing some more permanent damage to Larsen would be suitable right about now, but then he found some clarity as he looked to the window and envisioned Roahn standing right outside. The poor girl. Lost and confused. Just silently pleading with him to come home.

No. It was done. This was over.

Heart heavy, breathing laborious, Shepard finally unclenched his hands and let the cloth of Larsen's suit slip from his grip. His legs now acting of their own accord, his stiff body distanced himself from Larsen and he slowly raised his hands up behind his head, already complying with the shouted commands from the officers, even though they sounded distant—lifetimes away.

As Shepard was being cuffed by one of the officers, Larsen stood back up (with some difficulty from the injuries he had sustained) and tried his best to smooth out his wrinkled jacket, now stained with his and Shepard's blood. His smirk slowly making a comeback, Larsen smugly leaned against the desk, showing red-flecked teeth.

"You made a mistake, Shepard," the man wryly laughed. "On top of the many violations of the law you've shattered just in the last half hour, you hit an Alliance Senator, which if I'm not mistaken, is a _federal_ crime. I'm sure it will be tacked onto the rest of the mayhem and murder charges you've incurred from barging into _my_ city and wreaking havoc. It's the classic trope, Shepard: the Hero's Fall. I'm going to enjoy watching the Savior of the Galaxy earn a cell off-world. You've never had to face the responsibility of your actions. Now, you just might have that chance."

As much as Larsen wanted Shepard to lose his cool and make one last futile move, it appeared that Shepard was already spent. The commander had completely relaxed, peace falling upon his face. He was malleable, suggestible to the whims of the officers who were now leading him away. Shepard did not even spare a lingering glance at Larsen as he was led out the door, giving the senator a surprisingly empty feeling. The inattention, the glazed manner. Perhaps Larsen had not fully won in the end, the senator realized.

However, Larsen soon gave a disinterested grunt and he slicked back his hair as he was finally afforded a moment of quiet. Tenderly, he rubbed his jaw. His fingertips came away bloody.

Shepard… that fucking prick. He had the nerve to punch a senator without even giving a singular thought to the consequences afterward? What a stupid man. Larsen's stomach and jaw still were giving him a fair amount of irritation, though. Not a surprise after being bludgeoned by a literal human tank. Fortunately he could raid the medicine cabinet back in his office to dispel his pain once the craziness of this morning subsided.

Larsen returned to looking out the window, past the warped glass and out onto the crowd down below. His brow furrowed in consternation. He was going to have to do a great deal of explaining to try and justify the mess that had occurred today. He could see the news headlines in his head already: "All-Out Warfare in Berlin Streets." Sensational enough for the public to lap it up as if they were dying of informational thirst. The public was so predictable, so easy to manipulate. Perhaps… with enough spin, maybe Larsen had an opportunity here to frame Shepard as having snapped and gone on a rampage in this town. The past course of actions certainly did not sound like anything a _sane_ person would do, that was for sure. It was a long shot, but any effort was better than no effort.

There was a better chance of whipping up a quick PR strategy back in his office, where all his files were, so the notion to start heading there right away made perfect sense to Larsen. He would gather his secretary corps and work at a broad statement that would paint the commander in quite a bad light, get a hold of their contacts in the press— _Der Spiegel_ being the first that came to mind—and then they would proceed to—

The door gave a now irritatingly familiar bang as Larsen was beaten to the punch with approaching the threshold. The senator gave pause, blinking furiously in confusion as three differently armored individuals— _not_ policemen this time—barged into the office. Like regular Chimera foot soldiers, these men were decked out in the latest combat skins, thick and bulky. _Unlike_ regular Chimera foot soldiers, the skins were colored a complete matte black, with no splashes of color allowed to adorn their attire.

"Well? What the fuck do _you_ want?" the senator said rudely as he wiped his chin. "You're too late—they already took the commander away, so get the fuck out of my—"

The lead trooper, his face completely hidden by a helmet that was mostly comprised of a solidly polarized visor, did not respond to the aggravating senator, but instead reached behind him to withdraw a pair of solid steel cuffs—not hackable omni-cuffs—but traditional, old-school metal bands.

Larsen glanced up and down from the soldier to the cuffs, uncomprehending for a moment. His eyes then tracked to the shoulder plates of the three men, finally managing to pinpoint the small insignia inscribed there—a tiny white patch that Larsen realized, with a start, he ultimately recognized. The symbol instilled a nameless fear deep in the bowels of his mind, festering a spark of sudden and catastrophic terror. Suddenly adrift, the senator began to stammer as hopeless pleas stumbled upon his tongue.

"This… this isn't… he doesn't know what he's doing… I… I… I can help… I can fix this!"

The two soldiers that flanked their compatriot with the cuffs then moved forward to take hold of Larsen's arms, positioning them out front. Larsen was starting to become catatonic at this point as he continued to protest.

"No… no, stop! Stop! Don't do this! It's all over! It's under control! He doesn't understand! _He doesn't understand!_ "

Whether or not the pleas made any sense to the men, they did not help Larsen's case in any matter. The metal cuffs made heavy clunks as they fastened themselves around Larsen's wrists. The senator continued to make pathetic appeals to his captors, but they failed to utter a single word, their duty being their only drivers.

"You fucks," Larsen now changed his tone. "You think I'm as disposable as you? No… no. I have purpose. I have a use! You are pawns in his grand design. I am significant! We are not equal, you and I. _I am the only thing that is keeping this whole debacle from_ —"

Larsen felt a pinch at the base of his neck and he cut off his own sentence as he made a small sound of discomfort. Realizing what had happened, he glanced over in horror to find one of the soldiers stowing away the syringe he had just stuck into the senator. The contents of the syringe hit Larsen in seconds. His eyelids felt like they had gained fifty pounds and the inclination to take a rest sounded like a mighty good idea right about now.

" _You'll find out what he has in store for you_ ," one of the soldiers finally uttered, but there was nothing that Larsen could do or say back. That was the last thing that he heard before unconsciousness overtook him.

Calmness flooded his head. He blacked out.

* * *

It had ceased snowing by the time Shepard was led outside through the front doors of the Reichstag. He said nothing to the police as they gently led him through the gates and down the stairs, being extremely cooperative through the entire process. A medic had given him some omni-gel and had thrown a bandage over his wounded eye, which made his injury look a lot less ghastly.

The mass of protestors, as if on cue, all quieted upon realizing that Shepard was back outside with them. For many of them, this was the first time they had ever seen the commander, not to mention his crew, in person. For some, this would be the last time. Everyone seemed awed as they simultaneously took in the knowledge that they were in the presence of the man who had saved all of their lives several years ago. There was no excitement, just a solemn and dutiful respect.

No one cheered. No one whistled in support. The throng of holographic protest signs and the whirring of camera drones were the only rapidly moving objects in the area that drew any attention to themselves. People just stared. They stared because they knew that any other reaction would be inappropriate. They knew that Shepard did not need to hear their love and affirmation. He just needed to know that they stood _with_ him, no matter what.

Despite the somewhat fascistic image of Commander Shepard being led to a waiting Kodiak shuttle in handcuffs, no one booed or heckled the police. In fact, the officers gently guiding Shepard down the steps seemed to be pained from their actions as they afforded the man their own gratitude and deference, despite their orders.

To the right of where Shepard was walking, a corps of Berlin police officers guarded a lingering group of unarmed Chimera troopers who were all dejectedly sitting on the steps—the remnants of the battle here. The weapons of the Chimera soldiers had all been deposited in a pile near a police truck and the apprehended men had shed their armor and had thrown the pieces next to their guns. The soldiers now sat while the police watched over them. Many were looking down at the ground in shame. The rest had blank looks on their face as they contemplated life. Shepard was struck by how young some of the soldiers looked and he wondered how many deluded and youthful men he had killed in the past few days because of one man's greed. He realized that he probably would not like the answer.

Shepard's lone eye scanned the crowd, taking note of the mostly human makeup of the congregation, but also managing to pinpoint a few turian faces, some asari, a salarian or two, and there was even a volus (for some reason). But Shepard's gaze never lingered long upon a singular person in the mob. He was searching for a familiar face and his heart would be eaten at with voracity until he could locate it.

Then, all of a sudden, he finally found her.

Roahn was standing camouflaged in the crowd, Garrus' hands lightly resting upon her shoulders. The dull golden glint of her helmet was specked with sleet, the remains of her _sehni_ folded within her hands. A quick glance revealed the rest of his crew standing interspaced within the multiracial horde, all of them looking up at him and smiling. Whether or not any bystanders in the crowd recognized who they were standing next to, no one betrayed any reaction whatsoever. All eyes were on Shepard.

Shepard's eye remained latched onto Roahn's. The two shared a sad little smile. Shepard's own gesture contained a playfulness of its own. He winked at the girl and Roahn nodded back to him, in admiration and in her own special love for him.

He was still smiling up until he was led into the Kodiak to be taken away.

Muted murmurings now grew from the crowd as the police convoy prepared to take off, ostensibly to transport their new prisoner to a jail for processing. The Normandy crew slowly filed off further towards the park boundary, putting some distance between them and the police, who were only now beginning to clamp down on the situation.

No one said a word, not even Roahn as she tenderly looked back at the shuttle her father was in, her breathing now becoming ragged.

Familiar faces had disengaged from the crowd, anxiously awaiting an update. Sam and Nya were waiting for them near the forested edge of the park, both looking rather cold in this weather. The doctor read the crew as best as he could, his arm interlinked with his wife's.

"We got here to see the end. I hope everything went all right?" he said by measure of a greeting.

Liara itched her cheek, where she had garnered a shallow scratch. "Hard to say. I know things might not seem ideal… but they probably went better than expected."

"You're not all concerned about the end result?" Nya asked for anyone to answer, referring to Shepard being held by the police.

Garrus shrugged, still holding onto Roahn. "We'll have to see. Want my guess? I think that things are going to turn out _just fine_. I don't see any cause to worry."

"I'm glad you're so optimistic," Sam said a little apprehensively. The doctor did not look completely convinced, but he knew he was not qualified enough to dispute something that was not in his domain of expertise.

"I'm a regular beacon of joy, doc. You should know that. Anyway, you still intend to remain here for a couple days on your 'vacation?'"

"Planning on it," Nya answered in her husband's stead. "Do any of you need us to take you anywhere in the meantime? The starport? Citadel?"

Garrus and Liara glanced at each other before both gave quick shakes of their heads. "That won't be necessary. We've got things under control on our end."

"We're always open in case you need help," Sam offered. "So… what happens next for all of you?"

Garrus tilted his head in mirth as he tightened his clawed hands on Roahn's shoulders, reassuring the girl at the same time. Roahn looked up to view her idol and Garrus' mandibles twitched in her direction in the form of a tiny grin.

"What happens next? An opportunity. There's always an opportunity to be had."

* * *

 **A/N: There you have it. Hopefully this was the sort of thing you were all waiting for. I'm eager to hear what you think of things, most certainly.**

 **Playlist:**

 **Legionnaire - 1st Stage: "Time Bomb" by Jed Kurzel from the film _Overlord_**

 **Charge up the Steps/Trooper Melee: "The Union" by Martin O'Donnell, Michael Salvatori, and Paul McCartney from the _Music of the Spheres - Destiny_**

 **Legionnaire - 2nd Stage (Eye Out!): "Shutdown" by Dario Marianelli from the film _Bumblebee_**

 **Legionnaire - 3rd Stage (Roahn's Attack and Warp Field Onslaught): "Shoulder Touch" by Daniel Pemberton from the film _Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse_**

 **Legionnaire's End: "My Path Is Set" by Neal Acree from the video game _StarCraft II: Legacy of the Void_**

 **The Walk Outside: "On Your Way" by Daniel Pemberton from the film _Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse_**


	23. Chapter 23: Paradigm

_Alliance News Network – December 15_ _th_ _Broadcast_

 _Gail McKenna (Anchor 1) :_ _Welcome back, viewers. Some unexpected developments to share with you all in the political sphere: if the Senate's proceedings for their vote on the CAHMF-1 bill were not stirring up much of a fervor as expected, then what occurred this morning probably ended up exceeding everyone's expectations._

 _Zach Velasquez (Anchor 2) :_ _You're right about that, Gail. On top of the already hectic protests occurring outside of the Reichstag as citizens voiced their frustrations towards the looming decision to potentially have the Alliance secede from the Citadel Council, a commotion in downtown Berlin began brewing when forces from the Chimera private military corporation began embarking in a pursuit against the one-and-only Commander John Shepard, who had recently returned to Earth to present his own testimony towards the critical vote today._

 _McKenna_ _: Several pieces of military-grade hardware, including tanks and gunships, were rendered inoperable as the Chimera troops chased Shepard and his reunited team through the Berlin streets, ending only when the reclusive commander reached the Reichstag and endured a brief standoff with the Chimera forces. Although several members of the private military outfit were killed in the chaos, no innocent civilians were injured._

 _Velasquez_ _: Thank goodness for that, Gail. According to local reports, Shepard and his crew were actually trying to take preventative measures to limit such collateral damage, knowing that their presence in Berlin would likely stir up some trouble._

 _McKenna_ _: And also, due to a well-timed information leak that has been attributed to Icelandic hackers, Senate majority leader Raynor Larsen was implicated today in a sprawling scheme to conspire with Chimera being utilized as the Alliance's de facto military force. Fellow senators were quick to denounce the actions of their colleague and I'm being told that they plan to quickly vote on terminating the Alliance's contract with Chimera as a result of this conflict of interest._

 _Velasquez_ _: Shepard himself was apprehended by local police forces—we're expecting to be told the exact nature of his charges within the next few hours, but many believe that the commander will certainly be cited for his role in placing civilians in danger during his skirmish with Chimera, although from this reporter's point of view, that seemed to be unintentional on his part._

 _McKenna_ _: I'm with you there, Zach. We'll just have to hope that the justice system will treat our long-lost commander fairly. We hope to have more for you all later as the day goes by. Now, a word from our sponsor, Fentora, and how you can get a good night's rest through responsible medication!_

* * *

 _Unknown Location_

Raynor Larsen, finally at his wit's end due to boredom, had started to embark upon the oft-tried method of pacing back and forth around the small room that confined him in a futile effort to ward off the demons his wandering mind so liked to dredge up in the absence of stimuli.

The room he was in was a blistering white—floor, walls, ceiling, and a singular door. All hard surfaces and no comfort with the exception of a pathetically thin mattress splayed out onto a bench in what was a poor rendition of a cot. The place could metaphorically be described as coffin-esque, but admittedly, there was enough room in this place for him to walk around and stretch in all directions without banging his body into anything. Claustrophobia would not claim him here, at least for now.

Aside from the cot, there were only a few more items that adorned the room that were also patently incommodious and uninviting in terms of luxury: a toilet/sink combination off in the corner, a wide table that was bolted onto the floor, and a singular chair that sat in front of the table. All three items were made out of the same cheap stainless steel similar to those found in quotidian locker rooms. The entire presentation was low-tech. There had not been much effort into dressing up this cell to make it seem the least bit inviting to its tenant.

It _was_ a cell, Larsen had determined, although he had no idea exactly where he was. This was certainly not a Chimera facility, he knew that much. Larsen had been able to remember with remarkable clarity just about all of the events that had transpired leading up to the moment when he had been forcibly sedated by a paramilitary member of that unknown cadre. Although the area where he had been pricked and medicated no longer bothered him, the bruises on his jaw and abdomen, the results of Shepard's punches, still stung.

Larsen tentatively touched the area on his jaw where Shepard's fist had impacted. A well of fresh pain gave an eager stab, making the man wince. There was no mirror in the room for him to look at, but Larsen suspected that the afflicted site was probably a magnificent shade of purple and black by now.

There had also been an annoying moment when Larsen soon realized that he had been changed out of his rather expensive suit and into a nondescript cream-colored outfit that was slightly snug, almost like a jumpsuit, but baggy enough to allow him to breathe properly. The pricks who had dumped him here had most likely disposed of his suit while he had been unconscious—Larsen had half a mind to chew out the next person he saw in an irate fashion, upset over the loss of his clothes, but he knew that showcasing such theatrics was not going to help him out here.

This was no longer his world. His life was now hanging on someone else's whim.

An hour passed by with nothing occurring. Then another. Truthfully, this was only Larsen's impression that time was proceeding normally in his head. His omni-tool had been taken away so he could not use it to check his chronometer. Without a reference to the outside world, what might feel like an hour could very well be fifteen minutes in real-time. There was no clock in this room either, which only served to drive Larsen further into madness from being kept so solidly in the dark, metaphorically speaking.

Ever since awakening, Larsen kept on trying to think of things to pass the time. He sulked about the events of the past couple days—especially taking a good moment to curse Commander Shepard for his remaining years after he completely wrecked Larsen's timetable and gutted Chimera's infrastructure thanks to that little invasive stunt and those meddling friends of his. He also devoted several insults towards the Legionnaire, lamenting the operative's inability to follow through on his programming actions by failing to subdue Shepard in the end. The cyborg had evidentially bitten off more than he could chew, finally, but that bastard was probably having the last laugh at Larsen's expense anyway—the Legionnaire had been wanting to die for so long that his failure probably had come as a relief for him. Ironic, in the end the operative had gotten what he had wanted while Larsen had everything taken away from him.

Oh, if the Legionnaire were alive right now he would be howling with glee at Larsen's predicament.

Still the silence endured. Larsen hummed a few tunes to distract himself. He tried to play a few mind games, but each attempt to stick to a solid distraction failed miserably. An idea to search for hidden monitoring devices in the room offered a good way to occupy himself for around an hour, because Larsen was a victim of watching too many espionage films and he figured that any spy worth their salt would embed a bevy of recording devices in a prisoner's cell. After finding nothing, Larsen was still not completely deterred as he figured that his captors had hid their devices rather well and that it would take some smarts to locate them all, let alone just one.

As he was tapping his slipper against the floor while sitting upon his cot, Larsen's ears perked up as the deadbolts to the door fluidly slid open. He straightened as one of the all-black troopers—very much of the same ilk that had brought him to this place—stomped in and stood in front of the metal table, a glossy visor masking the soldier's expression.

Larsen stood, partially in interest, and the trooper gave a subtle gesture towards the chair. An invitation to sit.

The captive did not take the offering just yet. "Where am I?" he asked the soldier.

The masked trooper gave no response, which incensed Larsen further.

"You have no right to keep me here like this," Larsen growled. "I am a senator of the Alliance and _only_ the Alliance has the authority to detain me. You can't—"

Not at all unnerved by Larsen's hasty declaration, the trooper entertained the prisoner for a bit before he, still silent, reached into his pocket and withdrew a tiny, black disk. The soldier bent over and gently set the disk on the table, giving it a little tap for emphasis.

Larsen ceased speaking as soon as he spied the disk. "What the hell is _this_ supposed to be?"

"Just sit down," the trooper finally spoke, his vocabulator automatically distorting his voice so that it came out in a deep rasp. "You'll see soon enough."

The soldier then briskly turned on a heel and walked out of the room, slamming the door shut to leave Larsen alone again. The ex-senator grimly appraised the disk upon the table and slowly brought out the chair so that he could sit down, like he had been told. There was nothing else to do, in any case. Might as well humor his captors. It would also give him a grateful distraction from his current ennui.

The disk, reacting in some way to Larsen's presence, softly brightened as a blue ring upon the object's face gradually warmed like fire trapped under ice. A tiny beam then pierced upward from the center, widening in a thick fan in the air that warped and condensed into a flat screen, one that Larsen realized was not unlike the screen of a holo-console.

A cursor icon then began blinking patiently upon the screen, emitted from the disk. Larsen looked upon the cursor in a blank fashion. Was he expected to type something out on this screen? There was no keyboard or anything for him to use. As he began scanning around the room for something of input, the screen gave a soft bleeping sound, drawing Larsen's attention back to it.

Then words started appearing upon the screen as the cursor began to type them out, letter by letter.

[ [ [ YOU MAY SPEAK. ] ] ]

Larsen instinctively gulped. He had heard of such interactions before. There were always rumors of black-box-type conversations that occurred with devices like these. One person hid behind a veneer of text while the other was free to speak to their heart's content. Of course, the person behind the keyboard on the opposite end of Larsen was obviously an intermediary, just an unknown face in a sea of unknown faces all beholden to the same master.

There was some indignation that Larsen felt at being shunted aside to speak to some nobody like this, especially in such a format like this. As a senator, he felt that he was owed more as a courtesy. This was more like an insult to him.

Biting his lip, Larsen felt that, insult or not, he had to go along with this. Adopting a deferential air, Larsen gave a weary sigh as he rubbed at the bridge of his nose before responding.

"I want to speak to him personally," he growled out, still feeling the bite of irateness. He waved a hand, indicating the screen in front of him. "This… whatever the hell this is… I won't do this. I want to talk. Face-to-face."

[ [ [ THIS IS THE CONVERSATION. THERE WILL NOT BE ANOTHER CHANCE. ] ] ]

Terse and to the point. Larsen dearly wanted to offer a few more rebuttals but it soon sank in that he held very little bargaining power in this place. As a prisoner, his captors could let him sweat in here for as long as it took. Larsen was not so arrogant to assume that he would hold out forever—everyone had their own breaking point. Knowing the man in charge, he had an infinite amount of patience. He could wait. Larsen could not.

"So… what does he want with me?" Larsen asked while he leaned forward and folded his hands atop the desk, now a bit more cooperative.

The screen rapidly bleeped as the response was typed out.

[ [ [ THE TRUTH, MR. LARSEN. THE TRUTH IS ALWAYS DESIRABLE. ] ] ]

"I… don't know that I could give him anything that he doesn't already know. He watches the news. He keeps close tabs on things. It's obvious, isn't it? The Council's destabilization? It's ruined. Dead in the water. Shepard… he managed to intervene in our—"

[ [ [ NO. ] ] ]

Larsen froze, sweat creeping down his neck, ice-cold. "N-No?"

[ [ [ SHEPARD DID NOT INTERVENE. HE WAS PROVOKED. DRAWN INTO THIS CONFLICT. YOU SANCTIONED THE INITIAL ATTACK. ] ] ]

All correct statements, though Larsen was loath to admit it. This intermediary was already going for the jugular, whoever they were.

"I… I… I did. I had no choice. Shepard was the key to achieving our main objective! His knowledge was going to expedite our plans. I had to try to bring him in for questioning! It's not my fault that he resisted when he could very well have surrendered into my custody for a day."

[ [ [ YOUR MAIN OBJECTIVE. NOT OUR. SHEPARD WAS NOT A FACTOR IN THIS STAGE. HE WAS NEVER CONSIDERED TO BE A VITAL COMPONENT OF THIS ENDEAVOR. YOU KNEW THIS. ] ] ]

A lengthy pause occurred then the screen blinked again.

[ [ [ THE PLAN WOULD HAVE BEEN ACHIEVED WITHOUT SHEPARD. HE WAS UNNECESSARY. THE OUTCOME—WHILE SEEMINGLY INTERMINABLE—HAD A THRESHOLD. YOUR ACTIONS HAVE NOW EXTENDED THAT THRESHOLD. ] ] ]

"Fuck you!" Larsen spat, his anger overriding his initial fears. "I told your boss straight out that I would be unable to keep myself from Shepard if he kept on delaying. That bastard had been living consequence-free for too long!"

[ [ [ YOU WERE SPECIFICALLY ORDERED TO KEEP AWAY FROM SHEPARD. YOU DISOBEYED THAT ORDER FOR A PERSONAL VENDETTA. ] ] ]

"Shepard was an Alliance soldier. He was an Alliance issue. I could pursue my own agenda while not overlapping with yours!"

[ [ [ AND YET YOU ENLISTED CHIMERA TO AID YOU IN YOUR AGENDA. THEIR INVOLVEMENT WAS NOT RECOMMENDED FOR SUCH A MISSION. ] ] ]

Larsen scoffed, an ugly sound. "Probably because they were so incompetent at their jobs. Your boss was the entire reason Chimera came to be in the first place. It was _his_ money that started everything. His equipment, his soldiers, his technology. Even that damnable Legionnaire was built from all of the research that he had privately accrued."

[ [ [ YES, IT WAS DISAPPOINTING TO DISCOVER THAT YOUR LEGIONNAIRE HAD BEEN DESTROYED IN THE CONFLICT. ] ] ]

"That was not my fault. That Legionnaire was a pompous, cocky, son of a bitch. He made repeated mentions of his desire to be more insubordinate and took a distinct sort of pleasure to irritate me at every turn."

[ [ [ BECAUSE, IN THE END, THE LEGIONNAIRE DID NOT TRULY WORK FOR YOU. HE WORKED FOR US. ] ] ]

"He was supposed to be _my_ tool!" Larsen banged his fists down upon the table, which dented due to the piece of furniture being made out of a relatively thin metal.

[ [ [ SO ARROGANT. YOU HAVE NOT LEARNED FROM YOUR MISTAKES. YOUR DISOBEDIENCE HAS BEEN NOTED. WHICH IS WHY THERE IS NO REASON FOR YOUR INVOLVEMENT TO BE RENEWED FOR THE FUTURE. ] ] ]

The room fell so quiet that the only sound was the terrifying throb of Larsen's own eardrums. It sounded like dim screaming to him. Swallowing was painful. His fingers became stiff, lethargic, almost as if arthritis had set upon them.

"Is that what this is all about?" Larsen's voice fell to a whisper as he looked around the room, craning his neck for emphasis. "You abducted me as a way of… closing out my partnership? You realize that I still have the capacity to serve? He came to _me_ and I helped him for years! I… am… a valuable asset to his—"

[ [ [ YOU ARE NO BETTER THAN A PEON. YOUR FAILURE HAS RESULTED IN A SEVERE SETBACK FOR THE FUTURE BY SEVERAL YEARS. YOUR HASTY MANEUVERING HAS ONLY BEEN A DETRIMENT. ] ] ]

"No… you don't understand. Just… let me talk to him! Let me explain it all! I… I am the reason Chimera exists today!"

[ [ [ CHIMERA HAS SURVIVED WITHOUT YOU IN THE PAST. IT WILL SURVIVE WITHOUT YOU IN THE FUTURE. ] ] ]

"And who will run Chimera without me?" Larsen's tone grew snide as he leaned in further towards the floating screen. "Not that pathetic twerp of a man, Koenig?"

[ [ [ YOU NEED NOT CONCERN YOURSELF WITH KOENIG. ] ] ]

A thin wisp of breath exhaled in the form of a dry laugh from Larsen. "I have enough cause to distrust him. His last words to me carried the threat of him turning against us. Selling us out, as a matter of fact."

[ [ [ WE KNOW. ] ] ]

"You… know? Then why haven't you done anything about it?!"

[ [ [ WATCH. ] ] ]

The blinking cursor then vanished upon the screen, leaving only a bare background for a fleeting moment. Then the picture shriveled and abruptly switched over to what looked like an overhead camera feed. The video was now displaying a security camera's footage of a hospital room, judging from the rather antiseptic and barren appearance of the furniture that adorned the place.

The main focus the camera exhibited was upon the bed against the wall. Lying within the bed, lightly dozing, was a man in a neck brace whose face was covered in several thick bandages—garnered from that glass bottle being broken over his head. Even from such a distance, Larsen recognized Erich Koenig right off the bat and a fresh surge in his gut broiled uncomfortably. Despite having clobbered the man in a cathartic fit of rage only days prior, the mere sight of the young imbecile made Larsen's blood pressure begin to rise regardless.

From the room, there was a click, and Larsen was able to behold the door to Koenig's hospital room open up—he then realized that this clip was not a recording, but beamed to him live. Four men, decked out in the same bulky and obsidian-black armor that had belonged to the group that was holding him here now, moved into the room in a stealthy manner. Larsen's hand unconsciously covered his mouth as the disguised soldiers began to form a semicircle around Koenig's bed. They carried automatic rifles, all the same model, and their heads were all helmeted—the exact same circumstances that Larsen had undergone. The injured Koenig was still asleep in his bed and had not realized just yet that he had visitors.

Larsen was not so sure that these men were here purely for a social call, though.

Back on the screen, Koenig began to stir after about ten seconds had passed, sensing that he was not alone in his room. Still the armed soldiers stood by, as if they were going to be patient enough to allow Koenig to see what was going to happen next.

Sleepily, Koenig rubbed at his eyes and, upon fully registering the four armored men in his presence, he jumped upon the bed—the most natural reaction, Larsen had to admit. Koenig frantically scrambled his gaze in all directions, his puny brain struggling to come up with a clear reason for this intrusion and apparently managing to come up with nothing.

" _How the…_ " Koenig's voice came out tinny through the screen and Larsen swore that the man sounded more annoyed than afraid. He got some clarification shortly after as Koenig continued talking. " _The fuck are you all doing in here?! I asked for someone to make a pub run four hours ago! Can you not see that I've been waiting here… asleep? Where is my pint? Can someone give me my—_ "

Koenig would never end up realizing that the men who had barged their way into his room did not work for him and were also not here to make a food run in his stead. Midway through the annoying man's ramblings, all four men, on cue, lifted their weapons and aimed them squarely at Koenig.

Even through the screen, the crackling roar of the weapons was alarmingly loud.

Koenig's body jerked and spasmed as he was riddled with bullets. Blood sprayed out in all directions, drenching the walls, sheets, and floor. Licks of flame illuminated the spurting red liquid as everything in Koenig's vicinity soon became painted red. He ended up being shot so many times that by the time the soldiers were finished, Larsen could not tell if what remained in that bed had ever been a person. Koenig's face had been completely shot off, his skull caved in. His torso was so pockmarked that it was impossible to discern one bullet hole from the next. Blood leaked from the torn-apart corpse, dribbling in thick rivulets to the ground. The blanket that covered Koenig, or what was left of it, slowly grew darker and heavier as the blood soaked into it.

The screen calmly switched back to the text page, leaving Larsen slightly dumbstruck in horror at what he had just witnessed. He had never liked Koenig, but even he had trouble justifying that sort of brutality as a comeuppance for the man's mistakes.

"Well…" Larsen finally coughed out, trying to seem nonchalant. "I… what is there to say? It's not like he didn't get what he deserved."

[ [ [ HIS FATE WILL SUFFICE AS A MESSAGE. SUCH IS THE PRICE FOR BETRAYAL. ] ] ]

"Then… what happens to me? Am I to be disposed of so callously?"

[ [ [ YOU ALREADY HAVE BEEN DISPOSED OF. YOU ARE NO LONGER IN CONTROL OF YOUR DESTINY. ] ] ]

It was the calm and dispassionate words that had been selected to be shown on the screen that really served to tick Larsen off to no end. Or perhaps it was the ever-growing feeling of powerlessness that had finally strained upon him so hard that he finally snapped.

"Okay, that's it!" Larsen raged as he levelled a finger straight at the screen, even though the action probably did no good. " _'No longer in control of my destiny?_ ' You cocksucker. You have no authority to decide when I might cease to be useful. I'm tired of speaking to a fucking intermediary! I don't want to talk to… whoever you are! Give me a direct channel to the precursor. Let me speak to _him!_ Who are _you_ to dictate what happens to me?! You're just a messenger. You have no idea what's going on!"

[ [ [ IS THAT WHAT YOU THINK, MR. LARSEN? ] ] ] The screen's chilling text slowly spelled out. [ [ [ THAT I AM NOT AWARE OF WHAT IS AT STAKE? ] ] ]

"Yes!" Larsen spat. "I won't be condescended to by a lackey!"

There was a distinct pause as Larsen waited for a reply.

Then the screen finally spelled out the next line.

[ [ [ AND WHO IS IT THAT YOU THINK YOU HAVE BEEN TALKING TO THIS WHOLE TIME? ] ] ]

It was distinct manner in which the printed words were chosen that gave Larsen pause. The man read the sentence three times over, each time his breath proceeded to escalate. He felt hot and cold all at once as a creeping numbness began to affect his extremities.

"You're…" Larsen swallowed. "You're not just an anonymous subordinate, are you?"

[ [ [ NO, I AM NOT. ] ] ]

"You're _him_ , aren't you?"

[ [ [ MY NAME, MR. LARSEN. YOU ARE FREE TO SPEAK MY NAME IN THIS PLACE. KINDLY DEMONSTRATE THAT FREEDOM FOR ME. ] ] ]

Larsen's lips quivered. He found that he barely had enough breath left to speak.

" _Aleph_."

[ [ [ VERY GOOD. DO I HAVE YOUR FULL ATTENTION NOW? ] ] ]

Nothing in Larsen's head could have prepared him for this. Past mistakes, all hurtling through him in taunting spirals, ate at him in glee for his arrogance. He slowly began to lean away from the screen, his jaw half-open, eyes already glazed in terror.

"My god…" Larsen whispered to himself.

[ [ [ NOT IN THIS DOMAIN, MR. LARSEN. ] ] ] The screen dispassionately wrote.

The still air seemed to take pleasure in the trembling Larsen within the walls of the room. The being on the other end of the screen fell silent, relishing its position while his captive tried and failed to come up with something—anything—to say.

One last sentence then appeared upon the display.

[ [ [ BEHIND YOU. ] ] ]

A rash of violent feverish energy—scalding blue light—abruptly warmed Larsen's back. The former senator froze as he was helpless to watch the screen disappear of its own accord. The hairs upon the back of his neck now stood on end, as if exposed to an electrical charge. His skin felt dry and glowing, like he had been standing out in the sun for too long.

Sluggish, almost in a drunken manner, Larsen rose from his seat and turned on the spot, laggardly dragging his gaze along before he would behold a most terrible sight.

From out of thin air, in the middle of the room, a glowing shape stepped its way out of what appeared to be a tear in space and time. Ragged edges ripped through existence, pulsating as they shimmered while glowing symbols in an unfamiliar language twinkled in meaningless matrixes, tumbling forth in a torrid downpour. The conflagration had appeared without warning, without reason. In an empty space in the farthest corner of the galaxy, a presence made itself known, no matter how impossible it seemed.

The light cradled the tall and imposing figure that now calmly stepped towards Larsen. He was tall, armored from head to toe in black and chrome plating. A hardshell suit, modified to exhibit counterpressure on its wearer. Experimental tech, something that Larsen had never laid eyes on before. A long and thick coat—no, a cloak—tumbled over the figure's shoulders, where additional plating had been placed over the fabric to broaden his frame's appearance. Electricity crackled from his gauntleted fingertips, sizzling and sparking. The wealth of unknown symbols flew around this man like a shield, protective as swirls of what appeared to be a fluid, yet gaseous, mist trailed in their wake.

It was the figure's head that intimidated Larsen the most. They wore a helmet over their face, completely obscuring their features. The helmet itself was comprised of an open-view visor, dome-shaped, that Larsen remembered was common for EVA missions in the depths of wild space. The visor itself was colored a thick silver, dully reflective and segmented along critical points. No sound escaped from the tiny vocabulator at the base of the helmet, completely silent.

The energy field continued to warp its way around the man, giving him the appearance of a hologram. Larsen continued to stand ramrod straight, perfectly still, as his eyes widened to their full breadth.

"Please…" he could only say to the mysterious figure. "I…"

The man gave Larsen no more chances. As quick as lightning, the shimmering form thrust out an armored hand and Larsen gagged as powerful fingers wrapped around his throat. It was no hologram. This was _real_. The figure easily lifted Larsen up off the ground, leaving his feet to dangle in midair.

Larsen beat at the arm, but his blows upon the sparking surface glanced off, completely ineffective. He gagged, beginning to turn blue, his lips still pathetically moving as he tried to sound out a final plea, but the air had finally departed his lungs.

Then Aleph spoke in a booming voice.

" _ **The Tranquility is nearly upon us. For the trillions tied to its fate, they will accept the horror without fear. For the trillions spared, their hope will assuage their mourning. But you, Mr. Larsen, will not bear witness to it. Prepare, for I offer you your escape."**_

Something from Aleph's fingers tickled Larsen as a nearly imperceptible jolt ran into the human's body. Invisible currents seared up fleshy pathways, drawn to a locus point as bright as the sun. Cells disintegrated, veins withered, and tissue crumbled as the discharge from the energy vortices unleashed within Larsen's body met in hellish maelstroms. Scrambling through skin, blood, and bone, the hidden arcs collided somewhere in the brain _en masse_ , causing a chain reaction to begin—a process that, once started, could not be stopped.

Larsen gave a choking gulp before he jerked once and fell still. Something let go inside his head and, all at once, a gigantic gush of blood started to flow from the man's nose, splattering the ground below. Larsen's legs kicked feebly in his throes, as more blood spilled from his mouth, trickling out of the corners. His eyes turned completely bloodshot and leaked red-stained tears. Blood dribbled from his ears as well, running vivid trails down the sides of his head.

The man had practically disintegrated in Aleph's hand.

Aleph made no other noise as he held the dead body of Larsen very still, exhibiting no fatigue as he continued to carry him aloft. The shielded visor offered no hint to his mood. There was no joy, no pity, no regret.

There was nothing.

Mercilessly, Aleph's fingers opened to deposit Larsen upon the floor. The body made a fleshy splat as it hit, spraying blood everywhere. Mysteriously, what blood had originally sloughed off onto Aleph had all disappeared by now. The figure was completely pristine with not an article stained about him.

The enormous man then waved an arm, and a wave of energy—the very same kind that had brought him to this room in the first place—washed over him like a cleansing surge. In seconds, the vortex had consumed the enigmatic person, leaving no sign of his presence behind as he inexplicably _disappeared_ from all existence.

Left alone, Larsen's body leaked precious blood upon the cold tiles.

* * *

"… _and earlier today, the body of Senator Raynor Larsen, who had fled authorities following the revelation of documents tying his illegal activities to the private military corporation Chimera, has been found dead in his Monaco apartment this morning. Police have not issued an official statement for the reason of death as of yet, but paramedics at the scene are unanimous that the cause was either a coronary failure or an ill-timed aneurism brought on by a suicidal overdose. We will have more details…"_

* * *

 _Rannoch – One week later_

" _I see them!_ " Roahn jumped up and down upon her perch, nestled between the branches of an _onosho_ tree, several meters above the ground. "Garrus, I see them!"

Garrus saved the page on his omni-tool that he had been reading before shutting it off and stood up from the stone bench just underneath the canopy of the tree. His gaze lidded towards a neutral angle to spy what Roahn had been referring to: a fast moving ground vehicle was cutting its way across the cliff-side path towards their location, raising a cloud of dust in its wake from its spinning wheels. Putting a hand up to his eyes to protect him from the glare of the sun, he looked up to spy the young quarian jittering excitedly above him in the tree.

"Okay, Roahn," he replied with a laugh. "I see them too. Better come down from that tree before you break your neck."

The girl immediately complied but took her time in clambering down the aged tree. She constantly had to maneuver herself to avoid being pricked by the razor-sharp leaves of the _onosho_. Even though she was wearing an enviro-suit, she could still feel the discomfort of minor stabbings through the material. Her boots gripped gnarled knots upon the trunk and she eventually made her way down with ease.

The quarian dusted herself off as she dropped the last few feet. The muted blue colors that wrapped around her suit were partially caked with brown dirt. The glistening silver of her shin guards were still scratched from the events back in Germany. But more glaringly, Roahn's helmet was still uncovered, making her look almost raw and helpless, with her _sehni_ having been destroyed in the fighting a week ago. Even though staring at a quarian without a _sehni_ was not at all taboo, Garrus could not help but avert his eyes if he looked at Roahn for too long. It simply did not feel right to be staring at the girl, realizing just how vulnerable she was.

Roahn took off to greet the new arrivals while Garrus stayed behind to deal with his own demons before joining the girl. The obelisk near the bench, closer to the base of the tree, commanded his attention. Flowers and wreathes from visiting admirers had been draped over the tombstone, throwing splashes of color upon the deep black monolith.

Respectfully, Garrus stepped around to the front of the onyx-black slab, folding his hands as he read the glowing Khelish script that beautifully spelled out the title of his dear friend.

 _Tali'Shepard vas Rannoch_

Gone. She had not even reached the halfway point of her thirties. Claimed by an insidious sickness that neither her nor her husband could have anticipated would have struck. Garrus dipped his head, taking a moment to breathe in the dry Rannoch air. It had been too long of a gap since he had seen Tali—this was the first time he had ever visited her grave site. Just being here, in this place, there was an aura around the whole scene that weighed heavily upon him, almost like the ground he walked on was holy.

That chipper attitude of hers. That ceaseless determination and loyalty. And of course, that shotgun she always carried, never afraid to use it as a means to end a touchy conversation.

Damn, he missed her.

Garrus was dubious that he could muster any words in his vocabulary to explain his absence to the grave. He liked to imagine that, knowing Tali, if she had the ability to see him right now, she'd understand the long wait.

Affectionately, he patted the top of the grave, letting the warm dust cake into his fingers.

"Don't worry," he spoke to the stone. "I'll see you again."

A cool sea breeze bit at the turian through his clothes, causing him to shiver slightly as he finally turned away from his friend's final resting place. He adjusted the sleeves of his shirt, as he looked out towards the ocean. The morning light was hitting the sea at such an angle that watery ripples of light continually wafted in his direction, alternating between allowing him a magnificent view and completely blinding him. While Garrus found the overall temperature of Rannoch to be conducive to someone like him, a turian, he had to admit that the chill that naturally sailed over the land from the nearby ocean produced a dip in the climate that was just enough to cause him discomfort.

The turian turned away from the sea and fixated his gaze towards the construction site that was situated several dozen meters from the cliff's edge. A maze of scaffolding and building materials were all grouped up around the foundation of a house made out of natural stone and tempered steel. When Garrus had first arrived on the scene a few days ago, he had come upon the charred remains of what had been a lofty and comfortable home, the abode his best friends had lived in for more than a decade. Blown to bits by Chimera over a month ago, barely anything had remained in the wreckage that gave any indication as to what the building had looked like in the past.

Entrusted with the original plans, Garrus had been tasked to travel to the capitol city on Rannoch to recruit some laborers to rebuild the house back to the way it had once looked—on the original site and with the exact same materials. Not knowing at all about the going rate for quarian laborers, Garrus had approached the local union and had requested a quote for the resulting work. He honestly expected that he would be dropping several tens of thousands of credits for the labor, but he had been absolutely floored when the quarian foreman had quoted him a price of around nine thousand credits instead. The quote gave Garrus mixed feelings; although the price was an absolute steal for such a large project, the turian felt like he would be taking advantage of the quarians who were trying to eke out a living on this planet. After a quick reference back to normal Palaven labor rates, Garrus had offered the foreman 30,000 credits for the job and had been promptly swarmed with grateful hired help as a result. " _How much?!_ " Garrus had recalled the foreman exclaiming. The way the quarian's voice had cracked one would think that he had won the jackpot in the lottery.

Watching the workers now build the house back up, brick by brick, Garrus felt a swell of pride at observing the work ethic of the quarians. No nonsense, barely a complaint, and they were fastidious in making everything as perfect as possible.

This house would be perfect.

The turian then made his way to the driveway's end, where Roahn was anxiously awaiting the arrival of the vehicle. The three-wheeled off-roader cycled to a stop slowly, so as not to blow any choking dust upon the people standing outside.

The driver's door to the vehicle and James Vega stepped out. Like Garrus, he had swapped out his armor for a more casual attire, although the human's choice of clothing was strategically picked presumably to show off his superior deltoids. James squinted his eyes and spotted Garrus, whose hand was perched on Roahn's shoulder, keeping her still. He waved to the two.

"Did you have any trouble getting here?" Garrus called out as he approached the car with Roahn at his side.

"None that we could tell," James said. "After we left Earth, everything was smooth sailing from that point on."

"You stick to the game plan like we said?"

"Perfectly. Did everything to the letter. We made sure to take random hops around the relay network, spending almost a day in separate systems to throw any pursuers our trail. After that, we headed over here."

"Is…" Roahn interjected as she stood on the tips of her toes, trying her best to peer through the windshield of the car. "Is he…?"

The side door to the vehicle then made a hissing noise as it swung open upon tortured hydraulics. From inside, the passenger stumbled for a bit before they swung their legs out, worn shoes depressing upon the cracked earth.

Shepard then stood up, a knapsack over a shoulder, his bushy goatee gleaming white. A black eyepatch now covered the area where his eye had been put out by the Legionnaire. But the man was all smiles as he concentrated solely upon one individual out of the entire group.

With nary a word, Roahn ran over to her father (after Garrus had gently lifted his hand up off her shoulder). Shepard kept on grinning as his daughter ran headlong into his arms, both embarking into a fierce hug, encapsulating all of their joy and relief as both came to the conclusion that a new chapter in their life had been turned. From here on out, things would look a little bit brighter.

"Hey, honey," Shepard whispered to his daughter. "Sorry I took so long."

" _Dad…_ " was the only word Roahn could choke out in return. Warm tears gushed past her closed eyelids, but as they were unseen, they did not last for more than a few seconds. Her father's strong arms held her, the exposed skin scarred and weathered. She clung onto Shepard tightly, fearing that her touch was the only thing keeping him tangible right at this moment.

After a minute, Roahn pulled back to get a better look at her father. Actually, she realized, with an eyepatch on, he did not seem quite so bad. There was a healthy pallor to his face and his beard was in a respectable style. Sure, there were still the remnants of scratches on his face that medi-gel had not been able to fully heal, but otherwise he looked well. If the loss of an eye had not dampened his overall mood, Roahn was unsure of what could.

Watching the two embrace, Garrus made a tilting motion with his head as he turned to look at James. "Breaking the commander out of jail wasn't a problem either, I assume?"

The human looked up to the sky as he belted out a boisterous laugh. "Actually, it was easier than expected."

"Oh? Do tell."

"More like the simplest job ever pulled. You see, the Berlin police deliberately dragged their heels when they were processing Shepard, so they temporarily interred him in the local city jail. Liara was able to pinpoint his location very quickly. You know, with her formerly being the Shadow Broker and all, finding someone was a breeze for her."

Garrus nodded sagely. "I can imagine it being a simple affair for Liara, yes."

"Anyway, we get to the jail and come up with a quick and dirty plan to spring Shepard free. Nothing too fancy, you know? We were planning on leveraging our natural assertiveness to muster our way through the jail, with hopefully minimal casualties. But… once we walked into the lobby, weapons drawn, we were in for a surprise."

"As in a whole platoon's worth of armed guards were looking right down at you, ready to fire?" Garrus pantomimed the scene with his hands.

James' grin broadened as he shook his head and raised three fingers. "Only three guards. A clerk and two disinterested patrolmen."

"Three guards? In the lobby or in the entire jail?"

"Three guards. Total."

"You are joking."

"Am not. Turns out, the Germans were not all that pleased at the prospect of keeping someone of Shepard's stature jailed. They're a much more forgiving sort than the rest of the Alliance, shall we say. Also, the Germans have a weird rule—something that a few other European countries have as well—that it apparently is not illegal for someone to break out of prison. As in, breaking out does not count against you in court."

"What? _Really?_ " This was unheard of for Garrus. Back on Palaven, breaking out of jail was considered an admission of guilt, regardless if a crime was or was not committed. It could effectively double one's sentence in terms of severity—turians were expected to wait their turn until a trial by their peers could be formed.

James was clearly relishing Garrus' surprise. "Yep. Really. Apparently the Germans did not give a damn about Shepard's cell security, and they put him just behind a simple barrier that was easily hackable. We didn't even end up scratching the lock. The Germans just stared at us as we busted Shepard free and merely looked the other way as we ushered him out the door."

Garrus considered this for a moment before laughing in astonishment. "What _is_ it about Shepard that inspires the best qualities in people? This… apathetic justice. Perhaps it's the opinion of the people that acts as the decisive vote for Shepard's innocence and not the Alliance. Heh, they would never stand to see him jailed on their world. Count on it."

"And good on them. Although… Shepard might have a hard time visiting Earth again. The Alliance has a long memory. They might not be as lenient as the public."

"It won't matter much," Shepard finally interrupted as he walked over, Roahn still in his arms. He jerked his head towards the house-in-progress behind them. "My home is here. I have no intention of leaving any time soon."

"I hope you'll visit more often, at least," James lightly tapped Shepard's arm. "My posting takes me outside the Local system a lot more now. Plus, the Citadel's still safe harbor for you."

"I _have_ been away for a long time. Maybe it would do me— _us_ —some good to get out of the house once in a while. There's still so much that I can show my family." Shepard indicated his daughter as he spoke then nodded towards Garrus. "Hey, thanks so much for looking after Roahn for me." He gently jostled the girl in his arms before he set her down. "She didn't give you any trouble, I hope?"

"This one?" Garrus reeled back a bit in mock surprise. "She drove me completely insane in the first hour. Actually, that's a lie. She was no problem at all. Incredibly well behaved."

Shepard smirked as he patted Roahn's back, who beamed from the praise. "I'm not at all surprised. But speaking of catching up, you're going to have to get me back up to speed. I've spent a week flying all over the galaxy without an extranet reference. What's the story back on Earth? Are there any developments going on that I need to be aware of?"

Garrus shot a side-eyed look at James before he responded.

"Shepard… Raynor Larsen's dead."

The human blinked in surprise, nearly floored. "Larsen's _dead?_ That's… the strangest… uh... how? H-How did he die?"

"Heart attack, it seems."

Now Shepard scrunched up his face in disbelief. "A heart attack? _That's_ certainly odd."

"There's more. Chimera's CEO, Erich Koenig, is also dead. Shot in his hospital bed in Berlin. The Alliance reportedly has no suspects."

"Hmm," Shepard pensively scratched his chin. "It all seems rather coincidental, don't you think? Two Chimera executives dying within a small time frame? Someone's cleaning house."

"I know what you're about to do, and I'm telling you right now, don't do it. Don't you even _think_ about saying that c-word in front of me, Shepard," Garrus warned as he waggled a finger.

Shepard glanced back and forth and proactively placed his hands over Roahn's audio receptors. "Garrus, why the hell would I even _think_ about saying that word right now?"

The turian blinked in a dumbfounded manner. "What… the… not _that_ c-word! The _other_ c-word."

Understanding and then relief flowed over Shepard's face. "Oh. ' _Conspiracy_.' _That_ c-word."

"Yes, _that_ word. We're not going to discuss anything revolving around _that_ , Shepard. You've got a fresh start here, a new chance. Let's not mess it up, okay?"

"Hey," Shepard shrugged as he removed his hands from Roahn's head. "Fair enough."

"But…" Garrus brushed aside his worries, "there are some good developments that will come out of this. Since the person who was peddling that stupid bill to begin preparations for humanity to secede from the Council has been… well… _killed_ …—"

"— _and_ disgraced," Shepard pointed out."

" _And_ disgraced," Garrus ruefully added. "All of that means that the bill is officially off the Senate table. Your people won't be pursuing that anytime soon. Also, I've been hearing rumors that Chimera is to be liquidated in short order. The Alliance immediately rescinded their contract with them after the revelation of corruption had been outed to the media. I suppose the Alliance contract was the only thing keeping Chimera afloat—they're completely out of capital. They'll be filing for bankruptcy next, the way that they're going."

Roahn yawned, the noise shaking the men from their talk of business.

"Sounds like _someone's_ tired," Garrus smirked.

"N-No…" Roahn hastily attempted to defend as she stretched out her back. "I just… couldn't sleep all that much last night."

Respectfully, the onus of the conversation had switched over to Shepard. Garrus and Vega both sensed it in turn and immediately adopted deferential positions, their postures similarly relaxing.

"It would be best for us to let you get some time to yourselves, Shepard," Garrus said as he shook the human's hand before jerking a thumb back down the road. "We'll talk more in the morning. James and I are staying in a hovel back in the town. We know where to find you."

"Sounds good," Shepard finished the shake and then took James' hand right after. "We won't travel far while you're here. Between the two of us, we've had enough adventures. Truly, thank you for all the help you've given us."

"No problem," James said as he made a brief nod, a finespun gesture. "It's good to have you back."

"Take care, you guys," Garrus waved as he then ducked into the driver's seat of the car while James, after some quiet arguing, took the passenger seat.

After watching the car speed away, Shepard then turned back to the house, taking a long moment to simply breathe everything in. The salt air of the sea. The beckoning warmth of the sun. The quiet rumbling of distant waves. A smile still etched upon his face, he began to trudge over to the bench in the shadow of the _onosho_ tree, where Roahn had been perched previously. His daughter now clung to his side, trotting alongside him at the same pace while she looked up at him eagerly.

The sun's light blinked into his eye and Shepard had to squint in order to see without pain. His other eye—the most grievous injury—did not cause him too much discomfort these days. His vision was severely affected, obviously, and he sometimes had trouble with discerning distances, but otherwise everything else was manageable. On the best of days, Shepard could even forget that he was wearing an eyepatch.

"I'm glad you're doing all right," Shepard said to Roahn, groaning as he lowered himself down onto the bench, dropping the backpack at his feet that he had been carrying over with him. "Dealing with this nasty business, I know it took a toll on you."

"It was… certainly something," Roahn admitted with a shaky laugh as she hopped up onto the bench beside him.

"I'm just impressed at how well you've held up. I only wish that your mother was here to see it. I know that she would surely be proud of you for how you've handled yourself."

Roahn's cheeks darkened and she fought not to break eye contact in her brief embarrassment. "Thanks, dad."

Sensing the girl's slight discomfort, Shepard looked out to the horizon, his lone eye absorbing the watery brightness before he was forced to glance away, a burn spot seared in his retina from staring out at the solar light for too long.

The human then chose the next moment to change the subject. "We still have a while to wait before things return to normal. I'm guessing that Garrus has already told you that the house is going to take some time to be rebuilt?"

"He said it might take a few weeks, yes."

"Don't worry. We'll have everything back to the way it was."

"Will it?" Roahn shifted her position so that she could look more directly at her father. The human caught the young quarian's gaze and bit his lip as she spoke. "Back to the way things were? Or… are we going to repeat the same old mistakes before everything changed?"

Now Shepard politely chuckled as he set his hand lightly upon Roahn's shoulder, bringing her in closer. "Perhaps I said things incorrectly. What I meant to say is that we're going to move on from this, together. We'll come out of it, stronger than we had been before. I now know the things that I've done wrong in the past, and I will make efforts to correct them for the future."

"Maybe you should write a book or something. Jot everything that you learned down so that you can have it all in one place."

"Funny you should mention that. Tali's old biographer actually gave me a ping after seeing me on the news. He wants to see if he can get my permission to act as _my_ biographer—to complete the set."

"You should do it!" Roahn said as she grabbed onto Shepard's arm excitedly. "Do you know how many people would love to read it?"

"Would _you_ presumably be one of them?" Shepard gave Roahn a sly smile, knowing exactly to what she was referring to.

"Well… yes," Roahn uttered matter-of-factly.

Shepard ruefully laughed. "We'll see, honey. We'll see."

The human then bent over as he started to rummage through the backpack he had previously deposited next to his feet. From within, he withdrew a thin package, barely over a foot in length, made out of a firm but lightweight metal.

"I saved this from the first house fire," he explained as he proceeded to hand the package over to Roahn, who accepted it with both hands, "and I've been holding onto it ever since. I could not abide leaving it behind… even after all that has happened."

"What is it?" Roahn asked, even though she could open the box at any time and find out for herself.

"Take a look. Tali had intended it for you when you were old enough. I don't think there would be a better time to give you it than now."

With shaking fingers, Roahn gently gripped the underside of the lid and lifted it away. The top part of the package slid off easily. As she set the top to the side upon the bench, she looked inside the box for a long time, awestruck to the point of being inarticulate for several seconds.

Slowly, Roahn reached into the box and withdrew a _sehni_. She began shaking as she held the piece of fabric in her hands, soaking in every detail. She had seen this particular article so many times it had only taken her less than a second for the connotation to click in her head. Colored a royal purple, slightly frayed at the edges, and washed nearly spotless, Roahn could behold only a few blotches where grease and carbon had smeared into the design from years of use. Then there was the _sehni's_ most distinguishing feature: a scroll-like pattern of curling eddies and twines, like the cloudy spinning of a vortex or the churning loops of a whirlpool.

No question about it. This had been Tali's _sehni_.

"It's yours now," Shepard murmured softly to the girl. "Tali would not have wanted it to be gathering dust."

"It's… _perfect_ ," Roahn gasped, trembling in amazement. " _Th-Thank you_. It's just as beautiful as… as I remembered it. Can… can you help me with it?"

Shepard had to straddle the bench so that he could assist his daughter with her new _sehni_. Even with his inferior depth perception, he was still nimble enough with his hands. The _sehni_ itself was a remarkably simple design. It had only a singular clasp where the pieces of fabric met near the collar, the only part of the garment that required any actual assembly. Twin holes on either side were intended for the wearer to slip their arms through—the fabric would then be snug underneath the armpits. Shepard had to help Roahn most with lifting the _sehni_ over the array of breathing tubes upon the back of her helmet, making sure that the fabric did not bulge all that much as he set to work. Once that was completed, all Shepard had to do was straighten the _sehni_ out and clasp the two ends together.

Proudly, he lifted his hands away. Aside from the blue visor, Roahn truly did embody the spirit and likeness of her mother. The girl felt at the edges of her newest adornment, almost as if she was disbelieving that she could be wearing such an important article.

"How do I look?" she asked her father.

Shepard's reply was immediate. "You look great."

"I… I don't know what to say."

"You don't need to say anything."

Roahn looked like she was about to utter something further, judging from how she seemed to be fumbling with words, when something behind Shepard unexpectedly caught her eye. Her father noticed that she was craning her head to peer around him and that her eyes were no longer focused on him as well—being married to a quarian for a while, he had learned to pick up on several visual cues in the species. Shepard similarly turned around and managed to pinpoint a small cluster of multicolored young quarians trudging along the road by the sea. One of them was waving in their direction. Even at this distance, Shepard could discern what they were saying.

" _Hey, look!_ " One of them was loudly proclaiming. " _Roahn's back! She's okay!_ "

" _That is her!_ " Another cheered. " _Hey! Roahn! Roooahn! You're here! Ro's here!_ "

"My friends!" Roahn hopped up on top of the bench and waved back with both hands. Nee, Cevni, and Zayhn—such welcome faces—were beside themselves half a kilometer away as they all realized that their dear friend was alive and well. It had not even occurred to Roahn that the other girls would have feared the worst upon seeing the remains of their house. They had left so suddenly and unexpectedly that her friends had probably thought that she had died in the house fire. Guilt plagued her for a second before her happiness overcame the emotion.

Remembering who she was with, she quickly ceased in her jubilation and adopted a more serious tone. "Dad, can I go play with them?"

A bit bemused but charmed by Roahn's politeness, Shepard really had no inkling of refusing her such a thing. "You don't need my permission for that. Go ahead and be with your friends."

No doubt grinning like a fool under her helmet, Roahn's herculean effort at masking her joy was most likely giving her some strain, but she internally let out a sigh of relief. Something suddenly occurred to her and she fumbled at her belt for an item before she held out her arm, an object gripped in her hand.

"You can have this. I won't need it where I'm going."

It was the pistol. The very same one Shepard had taken from Roahn on this planet. The same one he had given back to her on Tuchanka. It was now offered to him grip-first, folded in its inert position.

A knowing glint passed through Shepard's eye as he carefully lifted the weapon away and slotted it onto his own belt. Before Roahn turned to depart, Shepard took his daughter's hand tenderly in his.

"It'll be waiting for you when you get back. You earned it, after all."

His daughter then surprised him by unexpectedly moving forward to supply him with one more hug.

"I love you, dad," her next words floated out flawlessly.

Caught off guard, Shepard's smile grew several sizes bigger as he held Roahn tightly. Standing on that cliff, the breath of the sea swirling around them, the rustling of the leaves and the pounding of the waves all merging into one continuous sound, Shepard felt nothing less than the luckiest man in the galaxy in that moment.

A perfect connection. Seared straight into the heart of pure memory.

"I love you too, Roahn."

The hug breaking soon after, the girl left to be with her friends, but not after she shot one final look of admiration to her father. Bidding Roahn farewell, Shepard retreated back to the bench underneath the tree, back to where his wife's final resting place was located.

Shepard sat for a long while, absorbing the sounds of Rannoch while continually staring at Tali's headstone. Sitting here somehow felt… right. Like this was the spot he was meant to inhabit at this point in time. His family was here. His memories were embedded here. All he ever needed was on this world. But there was still a whole galaxy out there, ready to welcome him back. There was no need to hide in the shadows any longer. He had cast them aside, scared them off with the light. The weight off his chest had been lifted, allowing him to breathe freely. Hell, even the aches and pains that had plagued him over the years had seemed to quell themselves on their own accord.

Leaning forward, hands upon his knees, Shepard soaked up the radiance the sun had to offer. Content with life, he closed his eye slowly as he let the visualization of the setting before him act as a transport to his innermost thoughts. Even with his shut eye, Shepard could easily envision the broiling sea down below, the baking crust of the ground, and the dim glittering stone that marked where his wife lay. The resulting images were so vivid that even Shepard was fooled by his own brain into thinking that he was beholding reality.

Left to his own devices, Shepard would undoubtedly return to the supposed sanctuary his memories had to offer. Torture masquerading as a haven. Evoking the circumstances of his past always drew fresh agony.

Until today.

Today would be different. Shepard dove straight into the brine of his mind, his consciousness so thick it was like swimming in mercury. With nothing but newfound joy for how he looked forward to the present, he used that emotion including the love he had for his daughter as a shield against the natural afflictions his intensive recall would dredge up.

With a smile, his mind opened up.

… _and he took a deep breath._

 _Both eyes opened as the thick and milky rays of sunlight heavily fell upon his face, warming his skin. His head swam from the familiar sensation of narcotics. Distant itches resonated upon his body, but he was too lethargic to even move a muscle to satisfy the irritations. He blinked several times in quick succession. His vision came back all white and blurry. So, he was not blind. That was something._

 _In his frustration, Shepard resorted to blinking his eyes even more frantically, as his eyelids seemed to be the only part of his body he could move on command. Additional context began tantalizingly floating into view within his head, giving him the wherewithal in his current state._

 _Where was he? Shepard struggled to reach out and grasp the tangible threads of stimuli. Sheets. Stiff cotton. A… a bed. Yes, that was it! The white light. Sterile. Slightly acidic scent. A hospital. Ah, he was in a hospital! He had been here for… some time, now. How long? A few weeks, at least._

 _Shepard's head throbbed. God, he thought, this medicine was strong._

 _The rest of the information began flowing in a steady trickle._

 _The Citadel. Illusive Man. Harbinger. The Reapers. Catalyst._

 _There had been a battle._

 _No… that was weeks ago. Now he remembered. He had woken up in this place a while back. The war was over. Their enemies had been defeated. He had won. But his injuries… they had done a number on him. The doctors had said that… he had spent a week in a coma, at the very least. Apparently he had been found on the Citadel, third degree burns covering a significant portion of his body. Bruises, cuts, and blood had otherwise marred what skin he had left hanging on him. Some of his organs had even shut down from the trauma, despite the extensive upgrades Cerberus had given him._

 _Shepard blinked again. Everything was starting to become a whole lot clearer. It also occurred to him that waking in this fashion was not a novel occurrence. He had been in and out of the operating rooms in this place, going in for several different surgeries that had resulted in his life being completely salvaged. Skin grafts, blood transfusions, and muscle therapies were just a smattering among the shopping list of procedures that had been performed on him. What had he gone in for this last time? An organ transplant… that was the most likely assumption._

 _Rolling his jaw, Shepard was now starting to sense the irritating sensation of gauze wrappings upon his skin. Several bandages had been wrapped around his head, over his torso, arms, and legs. Shifting his gaze downward as far as it could go, he could at least see that the medi-gel dressings surrounding his limbs were pristine, clean of his blood. The rest of the swathes applied to his person continued to insist that their presence be noticed. Shepard suspected that more than half of his body was all bundled up, like a mummy. He would have proclaimed that such treatment was overkill, but everyone in this place was worried about his health, one person especially._

 _Speaking of which, that one person, if he was remembering correctly, had always made sure to be the first face that greeted him after he awoke from each of his surgeries. The empirical evidence presenting a strong case in his head, Shepard rotated his neck as slowly as he dared so that he could find that one face that made his continued existence all the more bearable._

 _The natural reaction he exhibited upon finding familiarity in a foreign land exerted itself upon himself in due fashion: a smile._

 _Tali was sitting almost at breathing distance at the side of the bed, leaning upon the post that separated his mattress from her body. She was reading something on a tablet, judging from how her eyes were scrolling from side to side as she directed herself to the screen. Her slow breaths indicated to Shepard that she was at ease, completely comfortable in her environment, which in turn gave Shepard relief. If Tali was this calm at this moment, then he knew he had no reason to worry._

 _He let Tali read for a few more minutes as he took pleasure in studying her demeanor. She had not yet noticed that he had awakened. Whatever she was reading must be quite engrossing, Shepard figured._

 _Then, seemingly at random, Tali's eyes flitted upward to check on the status of her dear friend. She barely gave a start as she found that her eyes had connected with Shepard's open, blue ones. No doubt that she was pleased, regardless._

" _How long have you been awake?" Tali asked as she set the tablet down._

" _A few minutes. Not too long," Shepard answered. "I take it my surgery went well?"_

" _I didn't ask for the specifics, but I was told that everything looked good."_

" _What was this, the fourth surgery so far? How many more did they say I had to undergo?"_

 _Tali fiddled with her fingers before answering. "Two, at least. But you'll be out of here in a month, they hope."_

" _Wishful thinking," Shepard groused as he tried to lay back, his neck now smarting. "But… things could always be worse. It's not important, anyway. What were you reading while I was sleeping? You seemed to be interested in it."_

" _Kasumi actually gave it to me. It's a human novel. The Count of Monte Cristo. Pretty fascinating, really. I've only gotten through a third of the book but I have trouble putting it down. It's about this young man on Earth who is wrongly imprisoned for…"_

 _Shepard did not have the heart to tell Tali that not only had he read The Count of Monte Cristo before, but that it was actually one of his favorite books. He just found it delightful to share in the quarian's excitement. Bursting that bubble would deny him in being exposed to her joy. One of Tali's quirks was that she tended to get so absorbed in her explanations that she barely left anyone else room to butt in, but her detailed commentaries were so full of enthusiasm that it became simply infectious to listen to her talk._

 _Actually, come to think of it, taking in the aura of Tali's palpable energy was a sensation that Shepard soon realized that he did not want to take for granted. It was as if a filter had been lifted from his eyes. Clarity ensued in its fascinating detail. Shepard even took a pregnant pause to consider the ramifications of the impactful yet brilliant idea that had come to his head. Even through the thick haze the painkillers clouded him with, the searing bright mote of responsibility and sanity screaming at him to respond to their moral bidding._

 _What he did next was not just the levelheaded decision, it was simply right._

 _Lifting a shaking arm, Shepard tried not to show his strain as he found Tali's hand in his, gnarled knuckles gripping a suited palm. Tali immediately ceased explaining the plot of the book as she was about to voice a protest for Shepard seemingly overexerting himself, but not before he beat her to the punch._

" _Marry me," he croaked out._

 _Tali's words were shoved back down her throat as she experienced a temporary cortical overload. The wideness of her eyes right now certainly signified the degree of shock that had imparted itself upon her._

" _Marry me," Shepard said again. "I've already waited too long to say those words to you. I can't hold them in anymore."_

 _Tali still remained silent but, ever so slowly, she encased Shepard's hand with both of hers, holding it tightly._

" _You know I can't say 'no' to something like that," Tali whispered breathlessly, the look in her eyes both excited and anxious. "I could never refuse. You mean this, don't you?"_

" _Tali," Shepard said patiently. "Marry me. I would never joke about this to you. This is the easiest decision I've ever made. I'm tired of the fighting. Tired of conflict, of the pain. Without you, there would be nothing keeping me alive. I now realize that everything I did during the war was to get back to you. Marry me, Tali. I'll say it as many times as necessary because I want you to know that I can only foresee a future with one person in my life: you. I want a life with you. I want to give you happiness, a home, and, if it comes to it, a family."_

" _You really are serious," Tali was awestruck. "John…"_

" _Tali."_

" _You bosh'tet," Tali's voice murmured sweetly into Shepard's ear as she brought her helmeted head closer. "The one time in your life that you didn't even need to give a speech. My answer was always going to be 'yes.' I know how much you love me. It's that same intensity that I try to return back to you every day. We don't need to say it because there's nothing more to say. I will certainly marry you, John, because I don't want to have a future with you not in it."_

 _Finding her answer acceptable, Shepard's smile broke out into a full-on grin. He fumbled his next words as he now acquiesced to her gentle touch—her hands now lovingly held his head, keeping him still. Both breathing hard, but remaining captivatingly silent, the lovers embarked into the gentle swell of their synced emotional rhythms, each discerning the powerful joy that radiated from them in fierce waves._

 _Tali, nearly overcome, lightly rested her deep purple visor against Shepard's forehead. She held off from hugging him from the fear of injuring him further._

 _Their eyes deeply shut, both the human and the quarian savored each other as they took in the promise of the onrushing future, seemingly destined to never break their bond apart._

* * *

 _Earth_ _  
Santa Cruz, California, UNAS_

The sleek 8-series coupe gently rolled to a stop at the front of the residence deep in the heart of the redwoods. Sam McLeod gracefully rose from the driver's seat and walked around to open the passenger door to the car so that Nya could exit in a similar manner. Sam took a deep bow with a flourish and a snigger—clearly imitating the form of a valet while struggling to hold in his laughter further.

Nya was having trouble keeping her amusement withheld as well. She played along with the act and gracefully made a twirling gesture with her hand, offering it to her husband while uttering a snort of her own.

The two had been in somewhat of a silly mood since departing for Berlin. After spending the first day observing the craziness near the Reichstag, both Nya and Sam had found a fancy hotel and retired early, already worn out from the hectic day's events. However, when the news of Shepard's eventual escape made it onto the morning news the next day, both had found that their moods were significantly brightened as a result. They enjoyed a long weekend wandering to all the touristy areas of the city, while taking advantage of their remaining nights together for some badly-missed romance. As much as they loved their little girl, having a kid as young as Taylor under their roof did somewhat hamper their opportunities to be intimate with one another back at home. With them having their own hotel room while in Germany, there had been plenty of chances for them to make up lost time.

Perhaps all of the instances in which their affections were satisfied were the main reasons why both Sam and Nya were acting in such a close manner. Sam seemed to be casting an air of intense possessiveness as he backed the quarian up against the car while Nya herself exuded a raw sensuality as she began to place her hands upon the human's chest in a groping manner. The couple's breathed hissed out in deep pants, nearing the edges of animalistic impulses even though they were keeping their instincts firmly in check.

"If you want to have one more go at me, we can always find another hotel in town," Sam teased as he let his fingers lightly wander up the sides of Nya's neck.

" _Me?_ " Nya pretended to act outraged. "You started this whole thing! If anyone's the ruffian here, it's you."

"Is that an official complaint? You're nearly grabbing my ass, by the way."

Nya, now alerted, lifted her hands away like she had just been burned. Apparently she had not been paying attention where she had let her hands drift to. "You… are a bad influence, Sam McLeod."

Sam absorbed the statement with an overly-knowing nod. "Admit it, you were enjoying it."

"I… uh… well… it was that bed! That stupidly large bed in the Berlin hotel! I was just… remembering how it felt and—"

"Say no more," Sam raised a hand, a maddening smile on his face. "You're just as hopeless as I am, dear."

"Ooh, I could punch you right now."

"Yeah, I bet you'd _like_ that, wouldn't you?"

Nya then came at him, not-quite-jokingly, both arms raised over her head. Sam easily caught the quarian's wrists, stared with mirth at her as she struggled, and then brought her into a victorious hug. Nya's arms beat at Sam's back, a facetious outrage, but she eventually gave into the human's charms and squeezed him back.

"You really are an idiot," Nya sighed as she teased Sam's hair with her fingers after they had separated.

"Ouch," Sam sarcastically drawled. "So abusive."

"You would tell me if it really bothered you."

"Would I? I'm not _that_ open, Nya. Maybe you really _did_ hurt my feelings."

"Oh, shut up!" Nya dramatically groaned as she threw her head back, earning more chuckles from Sam. The quarian truly knew that Sam was playing things up, trying to drive a reaction out of her. And, damn it all, it was working. The human knew how to push her buttons the right way, his gaslighting driving her towards a temporary insanity. Nya then spent a few seconds teasingly slapping at Sam's arms while Sam yelped out as he pretended to be hurt.

The two then quickly sobered up after they had exerted all their energy, desire still lidding their gazes. They then proceeded to grab their luggage, lock the car, and head towards the front door, their faces a little more flushed than normal.

"I hope that Taylor was all right," Nya said as they set foot onto the first stone step. "I don't usually like leaving her all by herself."

"Are you kidding?" Sam said beside her. "The kid's probably doing just fine. Ten-year-olds are very resourceful. Hell, she'll probably be disappointed that we weren't away for a longer time."

Sam's words turned out to be somewhat prophetic as the tall walnut doors swung open to allow the couple inside, giving way to what appeared to be a scene of catastrophe within.

Nya dropped the luggage from her hands. Sam similarly followed suit. The two stumbled inside, their ashen expressions becoming more and more incredulous as they tried to process why the interior of their house looked like a crime scene.

Nearly every piece of furniture in the living room was out of place. Chairs had been toppled over. Ottomans had been turned upside down. There were even several rips in the leather couch, exposing yellow stuffing. A table in the middle of the room had been knocked to the floor, spilling what appeared to have been the remains of drink glasses, judging from the stains in the carpet and the clear shards nestled in the floor. The hardwood boards were sticky with juice. Several bottles of soft drinks lay aimlessly dispersed in odd locations: on the ground, atop the hearth, and one had even made it into the chandelier.

Confetti and colored streamers joined the collection of broken glass on the ground. A board game had been apparently chucked into the corner, the figurines scattered with it. Several empty pizza boxes had been collected into a tower, which had fallen over, smearing cheese and grease into more pieces of furniture. And, if Sam was to crane his head, he could see that the fridge over in the kitchen was still slightly ajar, the remainder of the pizza slices stuffed into every single shelf the thing had to offer.

The culprit, anticipating Sam and Nya's arrival, stood directly in the middle of the blast zone, a sheepish look on her face.

"Hi… mom. Hi… dad," Taylor waved nervously. "I know it _looks_ like I held a party here while you were gone, but… I-I can explain everything. I had… I had no time to c-clean. It… it was.. I… I just… you're going to ground me now, aren't you?"

Slowly, a white-faced Sam raised his arms up so that he could clasp his temples, two seconds away from completely losing his head.

"Taylor…" he spoke so softly that his words became terrifying, "I'm sorry, but it's the end of the world for you."

* * *

 **A/N: And, just like that, we're done.**

 **Honestly, the whole time that _Cenotaph_ was in development, I've been continually delighted and content with the sort of reception and feedback that I've gotten from all of you. Whenever I start a new project, I'm always slightly nervous at how an idea of mine might be received. I'm just glad that I've been able to entertain so many people and to share in this little adventure I've had in my head for over half a year now of Shepard and Roahn. I hope you guys enjoyed it.**

 **You can probably determine that there was a plot thread in this last chapter that was so obviously left dangling. The reason for that is simple: _Cenotaph_ will be eventually expanded into a trilogy. I've envisioned two more installments that will focus on Roahn as the main character, leaving Shepard on the sidelines as the torch has now been passed. I know I might have said that I intended for _Cenotaph_ to be a stand-alone story, but to be honest, I'm not required to tell the truth around here, heh. I can pull a Romney - I can change my mind. And the truth was that as I was writing, I realized that I wouldn't mind seeing more of Roahn and having her eventually own this series. It's something that should be fun for everyone (though, my idea of fun does not necessarily mean that it will be fun for all of YOU, hahaha.**

 **However...**

 **I will confess that I have no idea when I will start writing _Cenotaph's_ next installment. Between my temporary exhaustion in writing in addition to me recently finding a new job, my free time will drastically dwindle in the near future. It may be a while before I get my life back on track, but I do aim to conquer this series eventually. When that happens, I will be changing the title of this story to _Cenotaph I: The Morrow_ , to fit in with the new nomenclature this series will undergo (as well as modify the cover artwork to reflect that change).**

 **Truly, everyone, thank you for your support throughout this story. I know I sound like a broken record at this point, but I cannot overstate just how appreciative I am for the reception that _Cenotaph_ has garnered. Please drop a review when you can - I would love to hear your thoughts on this chapter, as well as this story as a whole. It lets me know what you guys really liked and what I could possibly do better the next time around.**

 **I hope that I have entertained. Until the next time. Roahn'Shepard will return...**

 **Playlist :**

 **Aleph/Larsen's Death: "A Storm is Coming" by Lorne Balfe from the film _Mission Impossible: Fallout_**

 **Tali's Sehni: "After the Party" by Edward Shearmur from the film _The Count of Monte Cristo (2002)_**

 **End Title: "Ember City" by Mastodon**


End file.
